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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

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Charles Simic
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: May 9
Anglicist
Essayist
Journalist
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Belgrade
Serbia
Dušan Simić
Čarls Simić
Principles
Lying
Truth
Stickler
Much
Principle
Life
Except
Activity
Poetry
Fun

More quotes by Charles Simic

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He who cannot howl will not find his pack.
Charles Simic
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I slept little, read a lot, and fell in love frequently.
Charles Simic
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Poetry is an orphan of silence.
Charles Simic
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Only brooms Know the devil Still exists, That the snow grows whiter After a crow has flown over it
Charles Simic
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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
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There’s no preparation for poetry.
Charles Simic
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Here is something we can all count on. Sooner or later our tribe always comes to ask us to agree to murder.
Charles Simic
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A poem is an instant of lucidity in which the entire organism participates.
Charles Simic
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To submit to chance is to reveal the self and its obsessions.
Charles Simic
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The highest levels of consciousness are wordless.
Charles Simic
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A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.
Charles Simic
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Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects, such as Duchamp's Fountain-urinal as sculpture) abolish the separation between art and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen.
Charles Simic
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Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.
Charles Simic
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The poem I want to write is impossible. A stone that floats.
Charles Simic
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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
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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
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Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other.
Charles Simic
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Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator.
Charles Simic
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For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.
Charles Simic
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One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.
Charles Simic