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[on Her Use Of Quotations:] When A Thing Has Been Said So Well That It Could Not Be Said Better, Why Paraphrase It? Hence My Writing, Is, If Not A Cabinet Of Fossils, A Kind Of Collection Of Flies In Amber.

-Marianne Moore

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[on Her Use Of

Marianne Moore

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[on Her Use Of Quotations:] When A Thing Has Been Said So Well That It Could Not Be Said Better, Why Paraphrase It? Hence My Writing, Is, If Not A Cabinet Of Fossils, A Kind Of Collection Of Flies In Amber.

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A Writer Is Unfair To Himself When He Is Unable To Be Hard On Himself.

You're Not Free Until You've Been Made Captive By Supreme Belief.

Poetry Is The Art Of Creating Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads.

A Symbol From The First, Of Mastery, Experiments Such As Hippocrates Made And Substituted For Vague Speculation Stayed The Ravages Of Plague.

Only Imagination That Towers Can Reproduce Evanescence And Render Rigidity Flexible.

One Detects Creative Power By Its Capacity To Conquer One's Detachment.

Hindered Characters / Seldom Have Mothers / In Irish Stories, But They All Have Grandmothers.

A Man Is A Writer If All His Words Are Strung In Definite Sentence Sounds.

Poetry Is All Nouns And Verbs.

Honesty - However Dangerous - Should Be As Valuable As Radium It Seems To Me.

Egotism Is Usually Subversive Of Sagacity.

One Writes Because One Has A Burning Desire To Objectify What It Is Indispensable To One's Happiness To Express.

Writing Is An Undertaking For The Modest.

There Never Was A War That Was Not Inward; I Must Fight Till I Have Conquered In Myself What Causes War.

Everything I Have Written Is The Result Of Reading Or Of Interest In People.

There Never Was A War That Was Not Inward.

Poetry, That Is To Say The Poetic, Is A Primal Necessity.

As For Butterflies, I Can Hardly Conceive Of One's Attending Upon You; But To Question The Congruence Of The Complement Is Vain, If It Exists.

Does It Follow That Because There Are Poisonous Toadstools Which Resemble Mushrooms, Both Are Dangerous?

Blessed The Geniuses Who Know / That Egomania Is Not A Duty.

I'm Troubled. I'm Dissatisfied. I'm Irish.

Concurring Hands Divide Flax For Damask That When Bleached By Irish Weather Has The Silvered Chamois-leather Water-tightness Of A Skin.

The Small Tuft Of Fronds Or Katydid Legs Above Each Eye, Still Numbering The Units In Each Group; The Shadbones Regularly Set About The Mouth, To Droop Or Rise

Dürer Would Have Seen A Reason For Living In A Town Like This.

I Am Hard To Disgust, But A Pretentious Poet Can Do It

It Is In General True That In Order To Create Works Of Art One Has To Have Leisure. On The Other Hand I Think That One Needs To Experience Resistance In A Practical Sense, And Even That Which Is Poignant To Bring Out What Makes Easy Reading For Others. Too Much Deprivation Of Course, Means Death.

The Self Does Not Realize Itself Most Fully When Self-realization Is Its Most Constant Aim.

That Which Is Impossible To Force, It Is Impossible To Hinder.

Fanaticism? No. Writing Is Exciting And Baseball Is Like Writing. You Can Never Tell With Either How It Will Go.

Life Is Energy, And Energy Is Creativity. And Even When Individuals Pass On, The Energy Is Retained In The Work Of Art, Locked In It And Awaiting Release If Only Someone Will Take The Time And The Care To Unlock It.

I Wonder What Adam And Eve Think Of It By This Time.

If We Can't Be Cordial To These Creatures' Fleece, I Think That We Deserve To Freeze.

We Don't Like Flowers That Do Not Wilt; They Must Die, And Nine She-camel Hairs Aid Memory.

The Ocean, Under The Pulsation Of Lighthouses And Noise Of Bell Buoys, Advances As Usual, Looking As If It Were Not That Ocean In Which Dropped Things Are Bound To Sink-- In Which If They Turn And Twist, It Is Neither With Volition Nor Consciousness.

As Contagion Of Sickness Makes Sickness, Contagion Of Trust Can Make Trust.

... We Do Not Admire What We Cannot Understand.

What Is Our Innocence, What Is Our Guilt? All Are Naked, None Is Safe.

The Mind Is An Enchanting Thing Is An Enchanted Thing, Like The Glaze On A Katydid-wing Subdivided By Sun Till The Nettings Are Legion.

What Is There In Being Able To Say That One Has Dominated The Stream In An Attitude Of Self-defense; In Proving That One Has Had The Experience Of Carrying A Stick?

The Power Of The Visible Is The Invisible.

Your Thorns Are The Best Part Of You.

Impatience Is The Mark Of Independence, Not Of Bondage.

In A Poem The Words Should Be As Pleasing To The Ear As The Meaning Is To The Mind.

There Is No Pleasure Subtler Than The Sensation Of Being A Good Workman; And In Work There Is The Sense Of Consanguinity-unconscious As A Rule But Sometimes Conscious.

The Sea Is A Collector, Quick To Return A Rapacious Look.

When One Cannot Appraise Out Of One's Own Experience, The Temptation To Blunder Is Minimized, But Even When One Can, Appraisal Seems Chiefly Useful As Appraisal Of The Appraiser.

The Heart That Gives, Gathers.

Among Animals, One Has A Sense Of Humor. Humor Saves A Few Steps, It Saves Years.

If You Will Tell Me Why The Fen Appears Impassable, I Then Will Tell You Why I Think That I Can Cross It If I Try.

Sun And Moon And Day And Night And Man And Beast Each With A Splendor Which Man In All His Vileness Cannot Set Aside; Each With An Excellence!

The Cynics In Life Are The People Who Are Always Trying To Do Things For People Who Don't Want Things Done For Them.

Poetry ... ... A Place For The Genuine, Hands That Can Grasp, Eyes That Can Dilate, Hair That Can Rise

We Are Suffering From Too Much Sarcasm.

Omissions Are Not Accidents.

Maine Should Be Pleased That Its Animal Is Not A Waverer, And Rather Than Fight, Lets The Primed Quill Fall. Shallow Oppressor, Intruder, Insister, You Have Found A Resister.

If Technique Is Of No Interest To A Writer, I Doubt That The Writer Is An Artist.

Poetry Is A Peerless Proficiency Of The Imagination.

Superior People Never Make Long Visits.

I, Too, Dislike It. Reading It, However, With A Perfect Contempt For It, One Discovers In It, After All, A Place For The Genuine.

When One Is Frank, One's Very Presence Is A Compliment.

The Passion For Setting People Right Is In Itself An Afflictive Disease.

When You Take My Time, You Take Something I Had Meant To Use.

War Is Pillage Versus Resistance And If Illusions Of Magnitude Could Be Transmuted Into Ideals Of Magnanimity, Peace Might Be Realized.

Excess Is The Common Substitute For Energy.

Not Till The Poets Among Us Can Be "literalists Of The Imagination"-above Insolence And Triviality And Can Present For Inspection, "imaginary Gardens With Real Toads In Them." Shall We Have It.

O To Be A Dragon, A Symbol Of The Power Of Heaven-of Silk-worm Size Or Immense; At Times Invisible. Felicitous Phenomenon!

The Deepest Feeling Always Shows Itself In Silence.

When We Think We Don't Like Art It Is Because It Is Artificial Art.

Assign Yogi Berra To Cape Canaveral; He Could Handle Any Missile.

My Father Used To Say, "superior People Never Make Long Visits, Have To Be Shown Longfellows Grave, Or The Glass Flowers At Harvard."

So Wary As To Disappear For Centuries And Reappear But Never Caught, The Unicorn Has Been Preserved By An Unmatched Device Wrought Like The Work Of Expert Blacksmiths.

Revision Is Its Own Reward.

Beauty Is Everlasting And Dust Is For A Time.

Conscious Writing Can Be The Death Of Poetry.

The Deft White-stockinged Dance In Thick-soled Shoes! Denmark's Sanctuaried Jews!

What I Write Could Only Be Called Poetry Because There Is No Other Category To Put It.

The Mind Is An Enchanting Thing.

Yule—yul Log For The Christmas-fire Tale-spinner—of Fairy Tales That Can Come True: Yul Brynner.

We Are What We Were At Birth, And Each Trait Has Remained In Conformity With Earth's And With Heaven's Logic: Be The Devil's Tool, Resort To Black Magic, None Can Diverge From The Ends Which Heaven Foreordained.

Wolf's Wool Is The Best Of Wool, / But It Cannot Be Sheared Because / The Wolf Will Not Comply.

Truly As The Sun Can Rot Or Mend, Love Can Make One Bestial Or Make A Beast A Man.

The Enslaver Is Enslaved, The Hater, Harmed.

We Prove, We Do Not Explain, Our Birth.

Originality Is... A By-product Of Sincerity.

All Are / Naked, None Is Safe.

The Irish Say Your Trouble Is Their Trouble And Your Joy Their Joy? I Wish I Could Believe It; I Am Troubled, I'm Dissatisfied, I'm Irish.

They Fought The Enemy, We Fight Fat Living And Self-pity. Shine, O Shine, Unfalsifying Sun, On This Sick Scene.

I Never 'plan' A Stanza. Words Cluster Like Chromosomes, Determining The Procedure.

[the] Whirlwind Fife-and-drum Of The Storm Bends The Salt Marsh Grass, Disturbs Stars In The Sky And The Star On The Steeple; It Is A Privilege To See So Much Confusion.

Any Writer Overwhelmingly Honest About Pleasing Himself Is Almost Sure To Please Others.

Pleasing Others

[on Her Use Of Quotations:] When A Thing Has Been Said So Well That It Could Not Be Said Better, Why Paraphrase It? Hence My Writing, Is, If Not A Cabinet Of Fossils, A Kind Of Collection Of Flies In Amber.

Camels Are Snobbish And Sheep, Unintelligent; Water Buffaloes, Neurasthenic-- Even Murderous. Reindeer Seem Over-serious.

The Hands Are The Heart's Messengers.

The Weak Overcomes Its/ Menace, The Strong Over-/comes Itself.

I See No Reason For Calling My Work Poetry Except That There Is No Other Category In Which To Put It.

He Who Gives Quickly Gives Twice / In Nothing So Much As In A Letter.

We Call Them The Brave Who Likely Were Reluctant To Be Brave.

Men Are Monopolists Of "stars, Garters, Buttons And Other Shining Baubles"- Unfit To Be The Guardians Of Another Person's Happiness.

There Is A Great Amount Of Poetry In Unconscious Fastidiousness.

Unconfusion Submits Its Confusion To Proof; It's Not A Herod's Oath That Cannot Change.

One Must Be As Clear As One's Natural Reticence Allows One To Be.

The Prey Of Fear, He, Always Curtailed, Extinguished, Thwarted By The Dusk, Work Partly Done, Says To The Alternating Blaze, "again The Sun! Anew Each Day; And New And New And New, That Comes Into And Steadies My Soul."

To Wear The Arctic Fox You Have To Kill It.

In A Poem The Excitement Has To Maintain Itself. I Am Governed By The Pull Of The Sentence As The Pull Of A Fabric Is Governed By Gravity.

... Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads In Them ... ... If You Demand On One Hand, The Raw Material Of Poetry In All Its Rawness And That Which Is On The Other Hand Genuine, Then You Are Interested In Poetry.

It Is Human Nature To Stand In The Middle Of A Thing.

Victory Won't Come To Me Unless I Go To It; A Grape Tendril Ties A Knot In Knots Till Knotted Thirty Times

Below The Incandescent Stars / Below The Incandescent Fruit, / The Strange Experience Of Beauty; / Its Existence Is Too Much; / It Tears One To Pieces / And Each Fresh Wave Of Consciousness / Is Poison.

I Believe Verbal Felicity Is The Fruit Of Ardor, Of Diligence, And Of Refusing To Be False.

Which Of Us Has Not Been Stunned By The Beauty Of An Animal's Skin Or Its Flexibility In Motion?

Of The Crow-blue Mussel Shells, One Keeps Adjusting The Ash Heaps; Opening And Shutting Itself Like An Injured Fan.

At All Events There Is In Brooklyn Something That Makes Me Feel At Home.

You Are Not Male Nor Female, But A Plan Deep-set Within The Heart Of Man.

Repression, However, Is Not The Most Obvious Characteristic Of The Sea; The Sea Is A Collector, Quick To Return A Rapacious Look.

Psychology, Which Explains Everything, Explains Nothing, And We Are Still In Doubt.

The Sweet Air Coming Into Your House On A Fine Day, From Water Etched With Waves As Formal As The Scales On A Fish.

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