A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.
-Jay Z
"Decoded"
Quotations
Poet
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
-Walt Whitman
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
-Jean Cocteau
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
-W. H. Auden
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
-Anonymous
" Movie “Dead Poet's Society"
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
-George Sand
The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.
-Jane Kenyon
