Being A Poet Quotes

I believe in being a poet in all moments of life. Being a poet means being human. I know some poets whose daily behavior has nothing to do with their poetry. In other words, they are only poets when they write poetry. Then it is finished and they turn into greedy, indulgent, oppressive, shortsighted, miserable, and envious people. Well, I cannot believe their poems ~ Forugh Farrokhzad

I once tried hawking my own book around the pubs in the hope that, like the Salvation Army, I too could sell to the cerebrally relaxed. It was a disaster. I had beer thrown over me for being a) a nuisance, b) not as good as Wordsworth and c) a nancy for writing poetry in the first place. ~ Peter Finch

Not being a poet, I prize truth above beauty. ~ Judith Rich Harris

It was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy. ~ Mary Karr

Being a poet is not a job or a profession but a way of life. ~ Kathleen Raine

It must be frustrating being a poet-or any sort of artist-and not being able to offend anyone any more. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Even if you're a poet sitting in your room writing a poem, you're still in the world - although I guess being a poet is a different than having to deal with 40 or 50 people to raise a couple million bucks and all that bullshit. ~ Abel Ferrara

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless - abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honor and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mindYou really have to make a resolution to write for yourself, in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying. ~ Allen Ginsberg

I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest. ~ Gerald Stern

Anybody who instantly goes from being a poet and a graduate student to being a public figure has to be in a state of shock. First people want to praise you, and then they want to attack you. No one can prepare you for it. ~ Erica Jong

Being a poet in the States is quite different from being one in China, because in the States poetry depends on the universities for its support. They finance the poets and help them get published. That isn't so in China. But overall it is the same. You can't change society with poetry. ~ Bei Dao

The attention one gets from being a poet isn't great. ~ Nick Flynn

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else. ~ Billy Collins

And once I knew a meditative rose That never raised its head from bowing down, Yet drew its inspiration from the stars. It bloomed and faded here beside the road, And, being a poet, wrote on empty air With fragrance all the beauty of its soul. ~ Henry Abbey

(1)BEING A POET
is like opening a car door
& exposing yourself.
(2)BEING A GOOD POET
is like opening the door
& exposing the passenger
as well. ~ Chocolate Waters

I had to slow down. If I was going to listen to Venice properly I needed to hear the cadence of the place. I needed to stand still. <...> I thought of Whitman observing the parade of humanity with lewd concentration. Walt had a good ear. He loved opera and knew how to sit perfectly still. ~ Stephen Kuusisto

A tear wells in his eye. It wells and then spills down his cheek. And despite being pumped with booze and coke, I can read that one eye as clearly as a billboard for cigarettes. Only instead of saying Alive with Pleasure it says, I Have to Go Now. ~ Augusten Burroughs

As you open yourself to living at your edge, your deepest purpose will slowly begin to make itself known. In the meantime, you will experience layer after layer of purposes, each one getting closer and closer to the fullness of your deepest purpose. It is as if your deepest purpose is at the center of your being, and it is surrounded by layers of concentric circles, each circle being a lesser purpose. Your life consists of penetrating each circle, from the outside toward the center. ~ David Deida

I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed, for a variety of - well, for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late '50s, early '60s - that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist. ~ Barney Frank

If complete enlightenment demands relinquishing the self, then complete enlightenment implies the acceptance of mortality. Not that there isn't more to being enlightened than accepting that our lives are brief and end when we did. But I do think it's a requirement. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Mindsight is a teachable skill at the heart of being empathic and insightful, moral and compassionate. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered
technologically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes
accessible as fast as you like; when you can simultaneously "experience" an assassination attempt against a king in France and a symphony concert in Tokyo; when time is nothing but speed, instantaneity, and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from all
Being of all peoples; when a boxer counts as the great man of a
people; when the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph;
then, yes then, there still looms like a specter over all this uproar the
question: what for? - where to? - and what then? ~ Martin Heidegger

For a human being, to possess a consciously experienced first-person perspective means to have acquired a very specific functional profile and distinctive level of representational content in one's currently active phenomenal self-model: It has, episodically, become a dynamic inner model of a knowing self. ~ Thomas Metzinger

I'm trying to get the terrorist out of the bugaboo category and into the category of a fellow human being. ~ John Updike

As I get considerably beyond the biblical allotment of three score years and ten, I feel with increasing intensity that I can express my gratitude for still being around on the oxygen-side of the earth's crust only by not standing pat on what I have hitherto known and loved. While oxygen lasts, there are still new things to love, especially if compassion is a form of love. ~ Norman Maclean

Look at Michelle Obama. Everyone keeps making a big deal about her arms being exposed, but don't get it twisted: her arms are out for a reason. Black women have had those arms forever - lifting, picking cotton, toting and carrying babies. ~ LaTanya Richardson

I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food - which they take for granted - but his or her entertainment value. Asmodeus took to his toy enthusiastically. In another week he permitted me to stroke him, producing a raucous purr, but, in order to save his face, pretending to be asleep. ~ Geoffrey Household

I don't smoke marijuana anymore. I don't drink. Marijuana is a handicap. So is alcohol. Alcohol is a terrible handicap. But in spite of being a handicap, it shouldn't be criminal. ~ Gary Johnson

It's only too easy to idealise a mother's job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn't the care of babies and children be thought of that way too? ~ Donald Woods Winnicott

Taoism means streching your being, becoming both a man and a woman and joining within yourself, to be the heavens themselves, to stretch your awareness beyond the breaking point until all opposites are reconciled within yourself. ~ Frederick Lenz

So, whatever it is that's stopping you
from being with me, like we both know what you want, then fight it, babe, because I can't be without you a moment longer. ~ Samantha Towle

Being a center of attraction is being on the center-stage with confidence. ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

I am, uh ... a 6 foot tall woman, I feel like I'm a healthy size, I'm not anorexic; and I feel that people who aren't anorexic are punished ... for not being anorexic. ~ Kristen Johnston

A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of God
that does not get under anyone's skin or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in which
it is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that? ~ Oscar A. Romero

I had never thought about being a professional fighter but meeting Pat [ Militich ] and the guys just pushed me in that direction. ~ Robbie Lawler

That was fantastic," Alvarez said. "I want to do it again. Next year, maybe, when my legs grow back." "Stop being such a baby," Laila said. "Ignore her," Alvarez said to Neil. "She's just sour because she lost nine goals in forty-five minutes. Don't know why, not like it's a new personal record or - ohhh, it is. Ouch, that's gotta sting a bit. So much for being first-draft. ~ Nora Sakavic

down with Bart for a few hours and sleep as best I could. Chapter 12 I was as tired as I could ever remember being as I pulled the station wagon up the narrow driveway and came to a stop twenty-five feet from my front door. I liked my simple house with two bedrooms and an attic a hobbit couldn't fit in. My front porch light was on a timer and illuminated the pathway, but the inside was pitch-black. That wasn't good. I always left one light on in my kitchen. Normally, I could see it through the front window, and it cast a little light across the whole house. I didn't want Bart walking into a wall in the dark. Someone had turned it off. The only defense I had was my Navy knife, which I dug out of my front pocket and flipped open. I use it as a tool, but its original purpose was as a weapon. The door was still locked, and I wondered if ~ James Patterson

The music stopped. The circle broke. Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation. In the sway of a sudden reverie among the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early morning dream. In the middle of a song on a warm Sunday night. Then it comes, always - the overseer's cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude. ~ Colson Whitehead

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. Secondly, the Earth's a Libra. ~ Terry Pratchett

It's sad. There's a lot about this industry that a lot of people don't know about and don't find out about. There are a lot of tough things and trials and stuff that you're faced with. Sometimes, God has other plans for people. Sometimes bands can't stick through it. It depends on the situation. Keep praying for the bands that you like, seriously, because a lot of things will try to get in the way of being together. We've been blessed with not deal with those yet, but if we ever did ... ? ~ Trevor McNevan

I am not that strong but my words are more powerful than I am. My soul is drowning under the weight of my own insecurities,
my heart is often broken and my mind desperately struggles for the right words, often failing, but I hope that the words that I write with a vulnerable heart
are strong enough to lift your spirit, awaken your consciousness and push you to the edge of your greatness. ~ J. Autherine

it's a terrible feeling when you first fall in love. your mind gets completely taken over, you can't function properly anymore. the world turns into a dream place, nothing seems real. you forget your keys, no one seems to be talking English and even if they are you don't care as you can't hear what they're saying anyway, and it doesn't matter since your not really there. things you cared about before don't seem to matter anymore and things you didn't think you cared about suddenly do. I must become a brilliant cook, I don't want to waste time seeing my friends when I could be with him, I feel no sympathy for all those people in India killed by an earthquake last night; what is the matter with me? It's a kind of hell, but you feel like your in heaven.
even your body goes out of control, you can't eat, you don't sleep properly, your legs turn to jelly as your not sure where the floor is anymore. you have butterflies permanently, not only in your tummy but all over your body - your hands, your shoulders, your chest, your eyes everything's just a jangling mess of nerve endings tingling with fire. it makes you feel so alive. and yet its like being suffocated, you don't seem to be able to see or hear anything real anymore, its like people are speaking to you through treacle, and so you stay in your cosy place with him, the place that only you two understand. occasionally your forced to come up for air by your biggest enemy, Real Life, so you do the minimum then head back down ~ Annabel Giles

Being the inventor of sex would seem to be a sufficient distinction for a creature just barely large enough to be seen by the naked eye. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared
myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I had a very low voice for the character in the show. I said, "That's not actually my voice. That's the character's voice." I'm being such an actor. ~ Richard Masur

I know there's a difference between being successful and feeling successful. And if you ask me if I feel successful, the honest answer is 'not yet.' ~ Simon Sinek

In football, you're taught to react by being aggressive, taught to react with violence. If you can't separate that on the field and off the field, you're going to be in a lot of trouble in your life. ~ Troy Polamalu

You need to know that you are a spiritual being so that you can do helpful things to allow your innate qualities to unfold and express. ~ Roy Davis

The word nature has given rise to a multitude of errors. Let me repeat that the nature of any being is the sum of the qualities attributed to it by the Creator. With immeasurable profundity, Burke said that art is man's nature. This is beyond doubt; man with all his affections, all his knowledge, all his arts is the true natural man, and the weaver's cloth is as natural as the spider's web. Man's natural state is therefore to be what he is today and what he has always been, that is to say, sociable. All human records attest to this truth.. ~ Joseph De Maistre