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I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.

Edith Sitwell

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Edith Sitwell
Age: 77 †
Born: 1887
Born: September 7
Died: 1964
Died: December 9
Biographer
Essayist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Scarborough
North Yorkshire
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
Edith Louisa Sitwell
Dame Edith Sitwell
Miss Edith
Thinking
Permissible
Unavoidable
Greed
Indeed
Poetry
May
Think

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Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
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In the Augustan age ... poetry was ... the sister of architecture with the romantics, and their heightened vowel-sense, resulting in different melodic lines, she became the sister of music in the present day, she appears like the sister of horticulture, each poem growing according to the law of its own nature.
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Virginia Woolf, I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her 'a beautiful little knitter.
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I wouldn't dream of following a fashion... how could one be a different person every three months?
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it is as unseeing to ask what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.
Edith Sitwell
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Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises.
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The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
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The reason why Matthew Arnold, to my feeling, fails entirely as a poet (though no doubt his ideas were good - at least, I am told they were) is that he had no sense of touch whatsoever. Nothing made any impression on his skin. He could feel neither the shape nor the texture of a poem with his hands.
Edith Sitwell
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I'm not the man to baulk at a low smell, I'm not the man to insist on asphodel. This sounds like a He-fellow, don't you think? It sounds like that. I belch, I bawl, I drink.
Edith Sitwell
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Picasso was a delightful, kindly, friendly, simple little man. When I met him he was extremely excited and overjoyed that his mother-in-law had just died, and he was looking forward to the funeral.
Edith Sitwell
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If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?
Edith Sitwell
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... all ugliness passes, and beauty endures, excepting of the skin.
Edith Sitwell
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My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
Edith Sitwell
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All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.
Edith Sitwell
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The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of a moment of their other lives - a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.
Edith Sitwell
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There is no truth. Only points of view.
Edith Sitwell
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I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Edith Sitwell
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What is the special privilege of youth? It is, I think, the power of looking forward, the firm belief that the future holds something that is worth possessing, and that, therefore, one can let the present moment drop from one without regret and without fear.
Edith Sitwell
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It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
Edith Sitwell
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I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.
Edith Sitwell