If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
-Derek Walcott
Quotations
Poet
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."
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-Alfred De Musset
"Le Poète déchu"
A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
-Edmond De Goncourt
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
-Jean Cocteau
"Le Rappel á l'ordre"
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
-Criss Jami
Always be a poet, even in prose.
-Charles Baudelaire
The poet is much more the one who inspires, than the one who is inspired.
-Paul Éluard
All good poems are victories over something.
-Stephen Dunn
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-H. L. Mencken
