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A good poem has its own life. It's like bringing a child into the world. You, the poet, birthed the child, but the child will surprise you continually. I think a work of art has its own aliveness, its own future.
David Whyte
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David Whyte
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: September 21
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Poet
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Marrickville
New South Wales
Australia
World
Art
Aliveness
Children
Continually
Work
Bringing
Good
Poem
Think
Surprise
Thinking
Poet
Life
Child
Like
Future
Birthed
More quotes by David Whyte
Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss.
David Whyte
and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly, so Biblically, but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love
David Whyte
Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's.
David Whyte
Anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
David Whyte
There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.
David Whyte
The tragedy with velocity as the answer to complexity is that, after awhile, you cannot see or comprehend anything that is not traveling at the same speed you are. And you actually start to feel disturbed by people who have a sense of restfulness to their existence.
David Whyte
I returned to poetry as a more precise way to describe the world, more precise than science.
David Whyte
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.
David Whyte
A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are or what they want.
David Whyte
To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world of weakness, a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstandin g of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear.
David Whyte
The frail, vulnerable sounds of which we are capable seem to be essential to a later ability to roar like a lion without scaring everyone to death.
David Whyte
I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love.
David Whyte
Poetry for me has been a long pilgrimage, a journey and a growing relationship with the unknown.
David Whyte
Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future.
David Whyte
A soul-based workplace asks things of me that I didn't even know I had. It's constantly telling me that I belong to something large in the world.
David Whyte
We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.
David Whyte
It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living.
David Whyte
When I recite poems onstage, I put myself into the very personal struggle and it grants tremendous perspective. At the same time you get another perspective on the poem you're reciting.
David Whyte
Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way.
David Whyte
We sabotage our creative possibilities because the world revealed by our imagination may not fit well with the life we have taken so much trouble to construct over the years. Faced with the pain of that distance, the distance between desire and reality, we turn just for a moment and quickly busy ourselves.
David Whyte