Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.
-Dorothy L. Sayers
"Busman's Honeymoon"
Quotations
Poet
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
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
Always be a poet, even in prose.
-Charles Baudelaire
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
-W. H. Auden
"The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose: Volume II."
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
-Jean Cocteau
"Le Rappel á l'ordre"
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"
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
