Mary Ruefle quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Mary Ruefle

Mary Ruefle Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Mary Ruefle on Wise Famous Quotes.

People, the people we really love, where did they come from? What did we do to deserve them?

A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.

I study nature so as not to do foolish things.

Someone reading a book is a sign of order in the world.

I'm lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love - write poems - and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me.

For years the tears fell
without touching the ground.
On this night they hit the floor.

Every time it starts to snow, I would like to have sex.

A poem is a neutrino - mainly nothing - it has no mass and can pass through the earth undetected.

All of the heroes
you see falling down
were filmed trying to stand up.

I remember being so young I thought all artists were famous.

In the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak.

Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet.

[On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted.

The industrial world destroys nature not because it doesn't love it but because it is not afraid of it.

My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it.

Words have a love for each other, a desire that culminates in poetry.

Hope wears a strange raincoat
and straps a gun inside.

Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event.

Irreverence is a way of playing hooky and remaining present at the same time.

Art has always been aware of itself as art.

It is not what a poem says with its mouth, it's what a poem does with its eyes.

If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it.

In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?

We are all one question and the best answer seems to be love
a connection between things.

In the end I would rather wonder than know

I hated childhood / I hate adulthood / And I love being alive.

The wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

I like to read because
it kills me.

Poetry is sentimental to begin with. To write a sentimental poem is an act of redundancy.

The words secret and sacred are siblings.

Something unpronounceable followed by a long silence points out my life is becoming a landscape.

Every creative act is an act of hypocrisy and violence. You may have to think about it for a while, but I am sure you can discover your own.

It is the first experience you ever had of reading a decent poem: 'Oh, somebody else is lonely, too!