“A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.” Quote by Stephen Dunn
“I don't let a poem go into the world unless I feel that I've transformed the experience in some way. Even poems I've written in the past that appear very personal often are fictions of the personal, which nevertheless reveal concerns of mine. I've always thought of my first-person speaker as an amalgam of selves, maybe of other people's experiences as well.” WorldPastConcernSpeakers Author:Stephen Dunn
“If the motive of writing is for some people a kind of exercise in dirty laundry, that's one thing. I've always thought of my poems as meant to be overheard, as I think all of these poems are. It seems to me if you get experience right, even your most painful or humiliating experiences - if you get those experiences right for yourself and make discoveries as you go along and find for them some formal glue - they will be poems for others.” PeopleThinkingWritingKindExercisePainfulDirtyMotiveMeant To BeLaundryHumiliating Author:Stephen Dunn
“There's a certain pleasure in violating the strictures of your education. The trick is, if you're going to explore ideas in a poem, to be suspicious of ideas and suspicious of your own mind at the same time. It's often a matter of orchestration and pacing. Of shaping some kind of dialectic flow.” MindKindPleasure Author:Stephen Dunn
“Poetry does so many different things, it's difficult to say anything definitive about its role, which of course varies from culture to culture. It can range from being stories of the tribe to the private lyric, to being as W.H. Auden said "the clear expression of mixed feelings" to nonsense verse.” DifferentFeelingsCultureDifficultNonsenseVersesSay AnythingVaryMixed FeelingsAuden Author:Stephen Dunn
“Plastic surgery is such a displacement. If people feel good in their skin, then they're beautiful, end of story.” PeopleBeautifulSkinsFeel GoodSurgeryPlastic Surgery Author:Francoise Mouly
“Often, we separate intellectual discourse from emotional reaction. But I take such genuine pleasure in things that are intellectually well architected. It's definitely an integrated experience for me. Much more than any kind of cheap, emotional pulls that you get in popular culture, when I read a sentence and it's beautifully written, it can bring me to tears.” KindCulturePleasureTearsEmotionalIntellectualIntegratedPopular Culture Author:Francoise Mouly
“I know what I as an editor respond to is a voice. A voice is not just a stylistic thing, but it means someone who really has something to say. I think a lot of what I get from books - whether they be books of comics or books of literature - is a window into somebody's mind and their way of thinking. Somehow, I can recognize some of my feelings in seeing somebody who is actually expressing their own inner reality.” ThinkingMindMeanBookFeelingsRealityLiteratureWindow Author:Francoise Mouly
“Art uses many different styles, but his voice is very consistent. He's always concise and clever and funny. That's true of somebody like Chris Ware, who has an emotional quality to his work - but it's boiled down and it's very sober and spare. Each word has great weight. Comics are not just pictures, but it is graphic design in the sense that they are composed and architected in a specific way.” ArtDifferentQualityStyleDesignEmotionalCleverConsistentSoberGraphic Author:Francoise Mouly
“It's useful to be born in a different culture because you see things that are not obvious. I come from France. In France, there isn't a pretense of objectivity in publishing. I discovered - and I don't agree with it - that in the US, the New York Times or The New Yorker has to pretend to be objective, and if they present this point of view then they have to also present the other side.” DifferentCultureAgreeObviousPoint Of ViewPublishingPretenseDifferent Cultures Author:Francoise Mouly