“It looks like poets will always have their work cut out for them.”
The Poet and the World (1996)
Context: Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events"… But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.
It looks like poets will always have their work cut out for them.
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Wisława Szymborska92
Polish writer 1923–2012Related quotes
“The way out, as the poet says, is always through.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
National Observer (20 January 1964)
Context: The best of our theater is standing on tiptoe, striving to see over the shoulders of father and mother. The worst is exploiting and wallowing in the self-pity of adolescence and obsessive keyhole sexuality. The way out, as the poet says, is always through.
Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist
Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105
“One looks like a grenade went off in there. The other looks like a bad knife cut.”
Peter Rhee (1961) American surgeon
Comparing gunshot wounds from AR-15 style rifles and handguns ([Sarah, Zhang, June 17, 2016, September 24, 2018, What an AR-15 can do to the Human Body, Wired, https://www.wired.com/2016/06/ar-15-can-human-body/]; [America’s Failure to Protect Its Children from School Shootings Is a National Disgrace, John, Cassidy, February 15, 2018, September 24, 2018, The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/americas-failure-to-protect-its-children-from-school-shootings-is-a-national-disgrace-parkland-florida]; [The one number that shows America’s problem with school shootings is unique, Amanda, Erickson, February 15, 2018, September 24, 2018, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/15/the-one-number-that-shows-americas-problem-with-school-shootings-is-unique/]).
“The eye travels along the paths cut out for it in the work.”
Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter
I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
Source: http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/65-aug.htm Bob Dylan Interview
“The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.”
Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist
Source: Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 74.