Poetry Excerpt Quotes

What air is there left to breathe ~ Antonio Cisneros

Let love be the gravestone
Lying on my life. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Together we read Keats's letters to his lost beloved about how the stitches on a cap she made him went through him like a spear. I lace my fingers with his. The average non-poetry devotee may think the intensity around this stuff off-kilter at the least, but for us, it's like digging our hands together into a secret vat of pearls. In that realm only we are rich as any royalty. ~ Mary Karr

I must say that, on the whole, I prefer fiction to poetry. ~ Yuriy Tarnawsky

It comes down to this: we're pieces of equipment
To be counted and signed for.
On occasion some of us break down,
And those parts which can't be salvaged
Are replaced with other GI parts, that's all. ~ Rolando Hinojosa

Class Act.

She's a first class act, graced with refinement and tact. But hold on! She has a beastly witty mind, a feral appetite for adventure, and a savage need for primal love! She's beautifully twisted, so before you take the plunge be sure you can swim deep. ~ Melody Lee

This assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded from the fact that she had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday. ~ Thornton Wilder

If breath is as close as I can get,
tomorrow, I'll become the wind
just to be with you again. ~ Frederick Espiritu

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you. ~ Billy Collins

In addition to the original Executioner series I have also written a number of other works with diverse taste, even poetry. None, however, have provided the pleasure of touching so many people from so many lands as have the Executioners. ~ Don Pendleton

The German language is so sonorous, isn't it? Beautiful language ... the language of poetry. Angry, angry poetry. ~ John Oliver

you don't lose a person
like a set of keys because you don't find them again
and you can still get to where you're going. ~ Andrea Gibson

Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible. If the whole world turns against you keep your eyes on the Friend. ~ Rumi

The decision to be together should be unconditional. It should not be only if you love me, if you are sweet to me, if you are this and that to me – no. It is to be together whatsoever – sometimes sweet and sometimes very salty; sometimes very beautiful and sometimes a monster.
Once you understand that, you have come to a mature love, otherwise love is only baby love. Small school children fall in love. They think in poetry and romance, and write poems and beautiful letters, but that's all childish.
They don't know what life is going to be. It is a hard struggle.
Because love is one of the most precious jewels, the struggle is very very hard. Only very few people achieve it. ~ Osho

I've been writing poems since I was sixteen. Back then, poems were an obvious release for all the frustrations and anxieties associated with adolescence. Mostly, they were a way for me to impress girls, even though I never remember any girls being impressed. ~ Tony Magistrale

You don't go after poetry, you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a lot of the work. ~ Phyllis Gotlieb

Better poetry than riches,
Better poverty than fortunes. ~ Stephan Attia

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress. ~ Lord Byron

The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation.
If a man writes well only when he's drunk, then I'll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it's bad for his liver, I'll answer: What's your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live without while. ~ Fernando Pessoa

If we must
both
be right.
we will
lose
each other. ~ Nayyirah Waheed

What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what's best for men?
Are you - -poor, sick, old ere your time - -
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride. ~ Robert Browning

I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words. ~ Theodore Roethke

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well. ~ Paul Valery

I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still. ~ Emily Dickinson

How many poems must you write to convince yourself you have a family? Everyone leaves and you end up the stranger. ~ Fatimah Asghar

Because my life without you would be
a place of parched and broken trees ... ~ Mary Oliver

Poetry relishes ripe fruit - but ripe is one thing and overripe quite another. That's something poetry doesn't like, so it couldn't care less if I were to fall overripe to the ground. ~ Kiki Dimoula

Show me a girl
Strong and sure
Who has many dreams
And never lies

Show me a girl
Carrying the fire within her
A girl
Bold enough and
With the overwhelming love

Show me that rare girl
Who don't know how to quit ~ Jyoti Patel

I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty. ~ Roberto Benigni

Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it. ~ Matsuo Basho

Keep an eye out for her,
she tends to disappear
intermittently, leaving no
note for one to know,
as to where she is going
and if she'll be showing
up for supper that day,
or in the dark, wander away.
But soon she will map
her way back to your lap
timidly, in need for a warm,
caring body to conform.
She likes to play with things,
but often her mood swings.
To hurt is not her intention,
all she wants is your attention,
and if you give your love to her,
she'll not smile but perhaps purr. ~ Akash Mandal

You're shadowed by your own dream, especially as you get older, of trying to create something that will last in poetry. And so, you're working on its behalf. ~ Edward Hirsch

Until recently, I thought 'occasional poetry' meant that you wrote only occasionally. ~ Billy Collins

We cannot always cry at the right time
and who is to say which time is right? ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Some poets write pages upon pages because their hearts have a song to sing and their melodies cannot be contained in a single stanza... and I find myself typing out a quote because my soul is still gasping for breath, and all the words form a single sentence: I miss us. ~ Alfa H

She now discovered amidst them, the poet's flights of fancy, and the historian's seldom pleasing - ever instructive page. The first may transmit to posterity the records of a sublime genius, which once flashed in strong, but transient rays, through the tenement of clay it was given a moment to inhabit: and though the tenement decayed and the spirit fled, the essence of a mind which darted through the universe to cull each created and creative image to enrich an ever-varying fancy, is thus snatched from oblivion, and retained, spite of nature, amidst the mortality from which it has struggled, and is freed. The page of the historian can monarchs behold, and not offer up the sceptre to be disencumbered of the ponderous load that clogs their elevation! Can they read of armies stretch upon the plain, provinces laid waste, and countries desolated, and wish to be the mortal whose vengeance, or whose less fierce, but fatal decision sent those armies forth! ~ Mary Charlton

The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light, They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake 'till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints ... So far I've had no complaints. ~ Dorothy Parker

It's just poetry, beauty and love. How hard can that be to act? ~ Robin Wright

But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm. ~ Edward Hirsch

When you said you loved me
I thought you meant you'd stay
I never expected it to end this way
So now I have to get through my day
Without you ~ Lidia Longorio

After all, these were blood drinkers, beings who spoke gently, liked poetry, and yet killed mortals all the time. ~ Anne Rice

That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg. ~ Frank O'Hara