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Donald Hall

Donald Hall Quotes

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Famous Donald Hall Quotes

“As I work over clauses and commas, I understand that rhythm and cadence have little connection to import, but they should carry the reader on a pleasurable journey. Sentences can be long, three or more complete clauses dancing together, or two clauses with one leaning on the other, or an added phrase of only a few syllables. Sentences and paragraphs are as various as human beings.”

WritingLanguageStructureSentencesGrammarSyllablesPunctuationClausesParagraphs
Book:Essays After Eighty
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“At sixteen, poets think that if they publish in a magazine that will be it. When it happens, it is not it. Then they think it will be it when they publish in Poetry. No. The New Yorker? No. A book? Good reviews? The Something Prize? A Guggenheim? The National Book Award? The Nobel? No, no, no, no, no, no. Flying back from Stockholm, the Laureate knows that nothing will make it certain. The Laureate sighs.”

WritingSuccessRecognitionPoemsAwardsReviewsPoetsPublishingSelf DoubtPrizes
Book:Essays After Eighty
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“Work is style, and there is style without thought; not in theory, only in fact. When I take a sentence in my hand, raise it to the light, rub my hand across it, disjoin it, put it back together again with a comma added, raising the pitch in the front part; when I rub the grain of it, comb the fur of it, re-assemble the bones of it, I am making something that carries with it the sound of a voice, the firmness of a hand. Maybe little more.”

WritingLittlesFactsHandsLightTogetherSoundVoiceStyleFrontsTheoryRaisesBonesSentencesCarrieGrainFurBack TogetherFirmnessCombsTogether AgainBack Together Again
Book:Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected
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