“I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.”
John Clare (1793–1864) English poet
Source: The Later Poems, 1837-1864: Volumes I and II
Very often misquoted as "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
Variant: Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 3, p. 51
“I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.”
John Clare (1793–1864) English poet
Source: The Later Poems, 1837-1864: Volumes I and II
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Picasso (1937), quote in: William Rowlandson (2007), Reading Lezama's Paradiso. p. 115.
Reply by Picasso when he was asked to explain the symbolism in the Guernica.
1930s
“The person who wrote the poem can tell you more about the poem than anyone else.”
David Yezzi (1966) American poet
Interview with Ernest Hibert (2006)
“So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Comment on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, according to Charles Edward Stowe, Lyman Beecher Stowe, "How Mrs. Stowe wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'", McClure's magazine 36:621 http://books.google.com/books?id=biAAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA621&dq=%22little+woman+who+wrote+the+book+that+made+this+great+war%22 (April 1911), with a footnote stating: "Mr. Charles Edward Stowe, one of the authors of this article, accompanied his mother on this visit to Lincoln, and remembers the occasion distinctly." <br class="br">Annie Fields, "Days with Mrs. Stowe", Atlantic Monthly 7:148 http://books.google.com/books?id=8F0CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA148&dq=%22Is+this+the+little+woman+who+made+the+great+war%22 (August 1896) <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made the great war?" <br class="br">Variant: So you are the little woman who caused this great war!
“…a poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it…”
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
"The Woman at the Washington Zoo," [an essay about the writing of the poem by that name] from Understanding Poetry, third edition, ed. Cleanth Brooks (1960) [p. 319]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
“I imagined it. I wrote it. But I guess I never thought I'd see it.”
Ken Follett book The Pillars of the Earth
Source: The Pillars of the Earth
“So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Variant: So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer
Source: Lacon (1820) Vol. II; CCXLVIII
Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist
TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)