The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
-Jean Cocteau
Quotations
Poet
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
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.
-Allen Ginsberg
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
-Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"The Sole Survivor"
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
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"
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-T. S. Eliot
"Dante"
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
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."
