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Charles Simic Quotes

Charles Simic is a Serbian American poet and former co-poetry editor of the Paris Review. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for The World Doesn't End, and was a finalist of the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for Selected Poems, 1963-1983 and in 1987 for Unending Blues. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007. Wikipedia  

✵ 9. May 1938  •  Other names Чарлс Симиќ, چارلز سیمیک
Charles Simic photo
Charles Simic: 14 quotes2 likes

Famous Charles Simic Quotes

“Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.”

Charles Simic

Source: Dime-Store Alchemy

“Silence is the only language god speaks.”

Charles Simic

Source: Dime-Store Alchemy

“One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.”

Charles Simic

Source: The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs

“For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.”

Charles Simic

“The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.”

Charles Simic

Charles Simic Quotes

“Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.”

Charles Simic

Source: Dime-Store Alchemy

“He who cannot howl will not find his pack.”

Charles Simic

“I left parts of myself everywhere,
The way absent-minded people leave
Gloves and umbrellas
Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck”

Charles Simic

“If the sky falls they shall have clouds for supper.”

Charles Simic

Source: The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems

“Should some senator or congressman have a sudden attack of conscience and blurt something out, “dark money” brings them to their senses and reminds them that their job is to facilitate the transfer of public funds into the pockets of the few and to not ask too many questions.”

Charles Simic

"A Thieves' Thanksgiving," New York Review of Books, November 26, 2014

“It’s never been such a good time to be a crook. In what other country of laws does one enjoy so much freedom to defraud one’s government and fellow citizens without having to worry about cops showing at the door? Small-time crooks sooner or later end up in the slammer, but our big-time con artists, as we’ve come to learn, are now regarded as the untouchables, too well-heeled and powerful to lock up.”

Charles Simic

"A Thieves' Thanksgiving," http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/nov/26/thieves-thanksgiving/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+Goya+Ferrante+crooks&utm_content=NYR+Goya+Ferrante+crooks+CID_8376c474295b4e263a32522d2bbfd922&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=A%20Thieves%20Thanksgiving New York Review of Books, November 26, 2014

“Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. … The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country.”

Charles Simic

"Age of Ignorance" New York Review of Books, March 20, 2012 http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/03/20/age-of-ignorance/

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