"Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast."
"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist."
Albert Einstein on Art"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
Vincent Van Gogh on Art"The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person."
Abraham Lincoln on Art"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
Aristotle on Art"A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament."
Oscar Wilde on Art"The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times."
"The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new."
"Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques."
"In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out."
"Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet."