David Lehman Quotes

I am completing a book I began back in 2002 called 'Poems in the Manner of.' 'The Matador of Metaphor' is from this manuscript. It is an homage to Wallace Stevens that appropriates certain of his techniques. ~ David Lehman

How like a winter has been my hard spring away from you, my harp.
Psalm ~ David Lehman

Someday I'd like to go
to Atlantic City with you
not to gamble (just being
there with you is enough
of a gamble) but to ride
the high white breakers
have a Manhattan and listen
to a baritone saxophone
play a tune called "Salsa
Eyes" with you beside me
on a banquette but why
stop there let's go to
Paris in November when
it's raining and we read
the Tribune at La Rotonde
our hotel room has a big
bathtub I knew you'd like
that and we can be a couple
of unknown Americans what
are we waiting for let's go ~ David Lehman

Obscurantism is the academic theorist's revenge on society for having consigned him or her to relative obscurity - a way of proclaiming one's superiority in the face of one's diminished influence. ~ David Lehman

If you have too good a time writing hostile reviews, you'll injure not only your sensibility but your soul. ~ David Lehman

If you're not paying for it through the health plan, you pay for it in the emergency room. ~ David Lehman

Poetry criticism at its worst today is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent, as if determined to inflict the wound that will spur the artist to new heights if it does not cripple him or her. ~ David Lehman

Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that, if stated directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false. The line between serious and spurious scholarship is an easy one to blur, with jargon on your side. ~ David Lehman

When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe ~ David Lehman

Words have no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbits and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used. ~ David Lehman

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic. ~ David Lehman

As David Zucker watched the casket of his late wife being lowered into the ground, he thought the worst must surely be over and it was time to start the slow healing process to begin life anew. ~ Phil Wohl

The key to a successful relationship isn't just in the words, it's in the choice of punctuation. When you're in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations. ~ David Levithan

In the well-ordered home we may experience a taste of heaven. ~ David O. McKay

Writers change the world one heart, one mind, at a time. That should be enough to keep us going. ~ David Farland

To come up short when you reach too far is not such a bad thing rather than not to reach at all, right? ~ David Twohy

We thought that's the way you were supposed to be if you were in a rock 'n' roll band. Flamboyant. ~ David Johansen

I would probably say David Bowie and Prince are the perfect people. They dress feminine/masculine and they're really sexy. Not many people can wear high heels and look sexier than a woman! ~ Aino Jawo

The point was the struggle. The earth thickened here so that he would labor. The shovel felt heavy so that he could feel he was doing something. The world provided resistance, and as we struggled through, we learned our final lessons. ~ David Vann

The conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over - and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident. ~ Henry David Thoreau

From the accounts of those who have had glimpses of Heaven in visions and revelations, it seems that we do mature somewhat in Heaven. Those who arrive in their youth grow to maturity, while older people appear more middle-aged, in the prime of life. ~ David Berg

I was quite cocky, but having been hailed as this great young golfer, I couldn't even make the high school golf team once I got there. I had a big dose of humble pie then, and ever since, I've always known that there is always someone out there better than you, more talented. Always. ~ David Chang

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love. ~ David McCullough

Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. ~ Henry David Thoreau

It's as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are. ~ David Levithan

Is that a cow?"
Harley laughed out loud. "What do you suppose our barbecue-loving Texas friends are going to say to that?"
"Actually," Sasha said, "I'll be more interested in what our friends from Bangalore will say to what our Texas friends will say. ~ David S.Goyer

But does this imply the bizzare prediction that you can substitute one sense for another? In the other words, if you took a data stream from a video camera and converted it into an input to a different sense – taste or touch, say-would you eventually be able to see the world that way? Incredibly, the answer is yes, and the consequences run deep, as we are about to see. ~ David Eagleman

A poem isn't a good poem, until you need it. ~ J. David Gray

In all my shows, I'm not interested in the iconic shots of the Capitol and the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. I'm always interested in trying to get the culture of the place - trying to get it right. ~ David Nevins

You do not see any improvements you would make?"
Miss Harding's smile turned mischievous. "Not at present. But I should have to see the inside. That is where ladies really excel, you know, in curtains and cushions and such."
"Indeed," David murmured, remembering how Maude had filled the London house with bolts and piles of fabrics and wallpapers and pillows the instant they arrived. Everything in the very latest style.
And then he thought of Emma's cosy sitting room, all books and family portraits and dog beds. ~ Amanda McCabe

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard. ~ David Hume

So, if I ever played Napoleon it would be with an Italian accent. He was an outsider, which also interests me. ~ David Suchet

But I can't imagine Harry being a stockbroker at 35. That doesn't really seem the stuff of 'Harry Potter'. ~ David Heyman

In hundreds of interviews with people at all levels I've made this discovery: The bigger the person, the more apt he is to encourage you to talk; the smaller the person, the more apt he is to preach to you. ~ David J. Schwartz

How many believers really live a lifestyle that results from believing that God has graced them to be not just recipients of the work of his kingdom but instruments of the work of the kingdom as well? When you believe this, you live with a constant ministry mentality that results in an everyday ministry lifestyle. ~ Paul David Tripp

Mitt Romney is quite a guy. At one point he and his wife bought a zoo and fired all the animals. ~ David Letterman

A fully positive relationship between Christians and Jews is one that would elide all differences. ~ David Novak

Him, trying to do the same. ~ David James Duncan

Poverty is not primarily about money. It is about having no idea what to do and/or having no one with whom to do it. The former I called imagination and the latter I called community. To the extent that our neighborhood had imagination and community, we were not poor. But without imagination and community, no money could help us. . . . The role of the local church is to be a community of imagination [for the kingdom].12 ~ David E. Fitch

Written in pain, written in awe
By a puzzled man who questioned
What we were here for ~ David Bowie

Ted Kennedy is endorsing John Kerry and I'm wondering, do you really want the endorsement of a guy with a Bloody Mary mustache? ~ David Letterman

We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the crimes of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value. ~ David Sarnoff

Good doesn't triumph because anybody tells it to. It triumphs when we push it and carry it and shout it and embrace it until it triumphs. ~ David Levithan

If you want to overthrow the government, you're not really conservative anymore. ~ David Hogg

Rock's always been the devil's music. ~ David Bowie

Her name's Inge," said David. "She's Lithuanian. ~ Graeme Simsion

Maybe relationships could have fractals, too. And maybe the sense of loss was when you're becoming a fractal of what you once were to each other. ~ David Levithan

If explicit metadata is a real problem, it raises problems that just can't be solved. It's not that we're not good at it; it's the problems cannot be solved because we're not going to agree about these deep questions of how we organize. ~ David Weinberger

Let's kill the big one with the red whiskers then," another suggested. "He looks like he might be troublesome, and he's probably too stupid to know anything useful."
"I want that one," Barak whispered. ~ David Eddings

As he listened to her, David wondered again how Jonathan could have betrayed this girl. He must have been so angry and so sad, and that anger and sadness had consumed him. ~ John Connolly

Better to lose with the right team than to win with the wrong team. ~ Ogwo David Emenike

The Egyptians would sacrifice red-headed men on the tomb of Osiris because red was the colour associated with Set, the Egyptian version of Satan. ~ David Icke

What you plan is too small for you to live. ~ David Whyte

The cricket's gone, we only hear machines In erg and atom they exact their pay. And life is largely lived on silver screens. ~ David McCord