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Twenties Quotes

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Twenties Quotes

“It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.”

Simple Company Dangerous Danger Poet Twenties Folks Saving Prophet Savings Swindling

Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

“I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, [so] I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Play Seems Poet Twenties Very Good Nine Novelists Nine Years

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.”

Trying Hands Poetry Literature Results Poet Late Twenties Nine Poetic Vulgar Late Twenties

Author:Robert Graves

“Ko Un is a crucial poet for the twenty-first century, and this is an enormously fresh and vivid translation.”

Firsts Century Poet Twenties Crucial Vivid Translations

Author:Robert Hass

“Like all twenty-one-year-old poets, I thought I would be dead by thirty, and Sylvia Plath had not set a helpful example. For a while there, you were made to feel that, if a poet and female, you could not really be serious about it unless you'd made at least one suicide attempt. So I felt I was running out of time.”

Ifs Feels Years Made Would Be Running Felt Example Serious Poet Female Twenties Suicide Thirty Helpful Twenty One Running Out Of Time Plath

Author:Margaret Atwood

“It's ironic that while I was a worker in Detroit, which I left when I was twenty six, my sense was that the thing that's going to stop me from being a poet is the fact that I'm doing this crummy work.”

Facts Left Poet Six Twenties Workers Ironic Detroit

Author:Philip Levine

“One of my great surprises when I was in America was about twenty-five years ago in Harvard, hearing Randall Jarrell deliver a bitter attack on the way poets were neglected. Yet there were about two thousand people present, and he was being paid five hundred dollars for delivering this attack.”

People Way Years Two America Five Poet Thousand Hundred Years Ago Paid Twenties Dollars Surprise Hearing Bitter Five Years Neglected Harvard Twenty Five Delivering

Author:Stephen Spender

“Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, "al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran." And he said, "Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one."”

People Ifs Giving Years Said Poet Give Me Twenties Dear Als Skeptic Tease Parody

Author:Tariq Ali

“When I was fifteen I wrote seven hundred pages of an incredibly bad novel - it's a very funny book I still like a lot. Then, when I was nineteen I wrote a couple hundred pages of another novel, which wasn't very good either. I was still determined to be a writer. And since I was a writer, and here I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Stills Book Play Seems Novel Poet Couple Pages Hundred Twenties Seven Very Good Determined Nine Novelists Fifteen Nine Years Nineteen Funny Book

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most. Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.”

Ifs Littles Problem Lasts Artist Hours Heard Minutes Poet Reader Scientist Twenties Suicide Commit Better Off Exhilaration Committing Suicide Re Entry

Book:Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Source: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book