Laux Quotes

You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good. — Dorianne Laux

If trees could speak they wouldn't — Dorianne Laux

How many losses does it take to stop a heart,
to lay waste to the vocabularies of desire? — Dorianne Laux

That's how it is sometimes
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you're just too tired to open it. — Dorianne Laux

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question. — Dorianne Laux

I also have my backpack of the tried-and-true, and because it is new to [my students], it becomes fresh to me again as well. — Dorianne Laux

Of course the sexiest thing a girl can do is not complain about her body. — Daniel Tosh

You did tell me what a very superior sort of mind your friend has. What a pity he was born trapped in a man's body. — Laurie R. King

The students always, always surprise me. — Dorianne Laux

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's. — Dorianne Laux

I have always loved too much,
or not enough. — Dorianne Laux

I'd like to build a TV company for myself. — Rob Lowe

To launch into a sphere you need to discover the gifts needed for it — Sunday Adelaja

Security is when I'm very much in love with somebody extraordinary who loves me back. — Shelley Winters

We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named. — Dorianne Laux

Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden. — David Mitchell

If I'm going to change, my life and experiences should change me for the wiser and more profound. — Kate Winslet

The more that accrues, the more depth, weight, and breadth we can bring to the poems, which we then need to throw overboard so we don't sink. — Dorianne Laux

A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world. — Dorianne Laux

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing. — Dorianne Laux

I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not. — Dorianne Laux

And oh, the oh my nape of the neck. The up-swept oh my nape of the neck. I could walk behind anyone and fall in love. Don't stop. Don't turn around. — Dorianne Laux

Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won't. — Dorianne Laux

I'm not the only person in the world who is suffering. I'm trying to talk to the world, responding to those voices. — Dorianne Laux

When you have worked with people all day who have so little and struggle to make it stretch, who live outside the rarefied, you are humbled. — Dorianne Laux

There's no word for what Young does, only for what he accomplishes-the capturing of small, daily miracles. — Dorianne Laux

We're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded. — Dorianne Laux

I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging. — Dorianne Laux

Tinted Distances is a tender meditation that reveals a careful eye and steady devotion to elegy and ode. — Dorianne Laux

... They are savage
for knowledge, for beauty and truth.
They crawl on their knees to find it. — Dorianne Laux

Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us. — Dorianne Laux

Perhaps I did nothing because I don't have enough fear to be a good parent. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

You can do anything in the world if you say "Hey man, don't blame me, the devil made me do it." It's an easy way to escape responsibility. — Ice Cube