“I am very driven when it comes to poetry, a complete obsessive of the truth be told.”

—  Dennis O'Driscoll

Poetry Quotes

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Dennis O'Driscoll photo
Dennis O'Driscoll 30
Irish poet, critic 1954–2012

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“I collected 599 pictures of Elizabeth Taylor — some people find that obsessive. I collected 599. Not 600, but 599. I feel that genius and obsession be the same thing. It is rare when a woman is driven by obsession. Similarly, it is rare when a woman is a genius. That's why I said one of my most notorious sentences, that there is no woman Mozart because there is no woman Jack the Ripper. Men are more prone to obsession because they are fleeing domination by women. They flee to a chess game or to a computer or to fixing a car, or whatever, to attempt to complete their identities, because they always feel incomplete.”

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“I was completely ignorant of the poetry of Poe; it is admirable, it is poetry itself, the dream, and how one feels that you have translated its soul! I am no more than a completely illiterate ignoramus, but am not any the less moved by it. I knew only Poe's prose, which I had read and admired very young before I had heard it spoken of, but how your poems complete and express the man he was”

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“I am strong-willed, and I am driven, and I am passionate…but I don’t have…a central cause…a motivating cause, I don’t know what that would be…other than trying to tell the truth when I work.”

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“I am completely passive about my poetry, unless I sense the rhythms, see the images and hear the words spontaneously, I am helpless.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Poetry Quotes

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“I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you”

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“This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!”

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As quoted in Head and Heart : A Personal Exploration of Science and the Sacred (2002) by Victor Mansfield
Context: He says, "There’s nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight." This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
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Completely become hearing and ear, and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.

“We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct…Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Source: Philosophical Papers (1979), p. 130.

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