Quote

One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

Charles Simic

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Simic
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: May 9
Anglicist
Essayist
Journalist
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Belgrade
Serbia
Dušan Simić
Čarls Simić
Writes
Touching
Touched
Despair
Ever
Writing
Yearning

More quotes by Charles Simic

Image
In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.
Charles Simic
Image
A poem is an instant of lucidity in which the entire organism participates.
Charles Simic
Image
I slept little, read a lot, and fell in love frequently.
Charles Simic
Image
The poem I want to write is impossible. A stone that floats.
Charles Simic
Image
Making art in America is about saving one's soul.
Charles Simic
Image
There’s no preparation for poetry.
Charles Simic
Image
There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile To be healed. There's a woden block where bones are broken, Scraped clean--a river dried to its bed
Charles Simic
Image
Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.
Charles Simic
Image
The world is beautiful but not sayable. That's why we need art.
Charles Simic
Image
Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator.
Charles Simic
Image
The stone is a mirror which works poorly. Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dimness, who's to say? In the hush your heart sounds like a black cricket.
Charles Simic
Image
If the sky falls they shall have clouds for supper.
Charles Simic
Image
A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.
Charles Simic
Image
Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.
Charles Simic
Image
I'm not a stickler for truth. To me, lying in poetry is much more fun. I'm against lying in life, in principle, in any other activity except poetry.
Charles Simic
Image
Only brooms Know the devil Still exists, That the snow grows whiter After a crow has flown over it
Charles Simic
Image
If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.
Charles Simic
Image
Here is something we can all count on. Sooner or later our tribe always comes to ask us to agree to murder.
Charles Simic
Image
For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.
Charles Simic
Image
Silence is the only language god speaks.
Charles Simic