Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
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Famous Mary Ruefle Quotes
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“It is not what a poem says with its mouth, it’s what a poem does with its eyes.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“I remember being so young I thought all artists were famous.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“Art has always been aware of itself as art.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“A poem is a neutrino - mainly nothing - it has no mass and can pass through the earth undetected.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“Words have a love for each other, a desire that culminates in poetry.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“Poetry is sentimental to begin with. To write a sentimental poem is an act of redundancy.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“People, the people we really love, where did they come from? What did we do to deserve them?”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“Something unpronounceable followed by a long silence points out my life is becoming a landscape.”
Source: The Adamant
“I study nature so as not to do foolish things.”
Source: Selected poems
“I like to read because it kills me.”
Source: Apparition Hill
“Irreverence is a way of playing hooky and remaining present at the same time.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“All of the heroes you see falling down were filmed trying to stand up.”
Source: The Adamant
“My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it.”
Source: Trances of the Blast
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“I hated childhood / I hate adulthood / And I love being alive.”
Source: Trances of the Blast
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“In the end I would rather wonder than know”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
“Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet.”
“We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love—a connection between things.”
Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures