A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-H. L. Mencken
Quotations
Poet
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
-Jean Cocteau
"Le Rappel á l'ordre"
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
-Walt Whitman
Poets are never unemployed, just unpaid.
-Kathy Skaggs
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
-Pablo Neruda
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
