James Broughton Quotes

Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.

Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is.

Behind me on the road through the wasteland lies the corpse of an imprisoned child.

They seemed to be locked behind built-in notions and no-nos, unaware of the mystery living through them or of the dance of illusion surrounding them.

The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy.

The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.

The only limits are, as always, those of vision.

Being identified as a poet in France or Denmark or India one is greeted with gracious respect.

Consciousness is the glory of creation.

I had a toy theater and a magic lantern, and when I was eight I built a stage for theatricals in the attic.

My earliest poems sing of the absolute necessity of allowing love to invade and pervade one's life. That can make the miracle happen in reality. Try it.

The American public does not know poets exist.

Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open.

Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.

Amazement awaits us at every corner.

Follow your own weird.

You're closer to your glory leaping an abyss than re-upholstering a rut.

Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be.

Life is adventure, not predicament.

I have been invaded by my own secrets and I must try to find out how to live with them.

It was as important to live poetically as to write poems.

Have men always been terrified of their true nature? Is all history a record of their denials of themselves?

My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.

My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.

Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing.

If you don't fill your days with love, you are wasting your life.

Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.

If bitterness wants to get into the act, I offer it a cookie or a gumdrop.

I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made.

How do you look upon other men as astonishing organisms? Only by so regarding yourself.

I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.

Men fear joy too much, fear their instincts. Fear a surrender to their feelings. Fear loving themselves in others and loving others in themselves. Fear loving their true gods.

True delicacy is not a fragile thing.