Quote

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

Mark Strand

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Life
Paying
Necessary
Prove
Poetry
Attention
Makes
Writing
Really

More quotes by Mark Strand

Image
Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
Mark Strand
Image
If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.
Mark Strand
Image
We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.
Mark Strand
Image
To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
Mark Strand
Image
In a field I am the absence of field.That is always the case. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the space where my body has been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.
Mark Strand
Image
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
Mark Strand
Image
And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes more than anything to be unwakened by what she cannot name?
Mark Strand
Image
Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
Mark Strand
Image
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
Mark Strand
Image
Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
Mark Strand
Image
A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
Mark Strand
Image
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
Image
I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
Mark Strand
Image
Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
Mark Strand
Image
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
Image
The future is always beginning now.
Mark Strand
Image
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
Image
I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
Mark Strand
Image
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
Image
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