Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.
Mark Strand
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Way
Space
Complain
Never
Lasts
Ruins
Would
Last
Complaining
Voice
Dust
Comes
Meant
Carpets
Tell
Wind
Folds
Happens
Knew
Carpet
Long
Happen
Outer
More quotes by Mark Strand
It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours. I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.
Mark Strand
Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
Mark Strand
Poetry is about slowing down. You sit and you read something, you read it again, and it reveals a little bit more, and things come to light you never could have predicted.
Mark Strand
Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
Mark Strand
She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.
Mark Strand
And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.
Mark Strand
A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.
Mark Strand
Even this late it happens the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
Mark Strand
I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.
Mark Strand
From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
Mark Strand
In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.
Mark Strand
I don't really think it will make much difference to me when I'm dead whether I'm read or not . . . just as whether I'm dead or not won't mean much to me when I'm dead.
Mark Strand
I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
Mark Strand
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
Mark Strand
I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.
Mark Strand
When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.
Mark Strand
I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
Mark Strand
To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
Mark Strand
I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.
Mark Strand
