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A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

Stephen Vincent Benet

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Stephen Vincent Benet
Age: 44 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 22
Died: 1943
Died: March 13
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
Stephen Vincent Benet
Writing
Phrase
Phrases
Poem
Walking
Rest
Write
Unravel
May
Catalyst
Come
Journal

More quotes by Stephen Vincent Benet

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At first I was blogging everyday, but I don't do that anymore. It varies sometimes I'll write these little essays and other times political commentaries. Other times it'll just be new work that I'm doing.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Ironically the blog has re-opened the essay as a good form for me. I like to look and make commentary! If I sense my essays are good, I try to resubmit to another place in pulp and several of them have been variously published in newspapers and magazines.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Remember that when you say I will have non of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange, you have denied America with that word.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Something begins, begins Starlit and sunlit, something walks abroad, In flesh and spirit and fire. Something is loosed to change the shaken world.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Dreaming men are haunted men.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls, Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars - They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble, Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesy, That something new is coming to the world, The Lord knows what! Well, it's a long time coming, And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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When Daniel Boone goes by at night The phantom deer arise And all lost, wild America Is burning in their eyes.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Sometimes a sign or a quote is simply interesting by itself and does not require anything beyond being framed on a page.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Basically when I'm walking I'm not consciously writing or intending anything. In the manner I have learned from meditation practice, I let things unfold.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Books are not men and yet they are alive.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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There's nothing compared to the history of writing about the city of New York that you get, say, in Charles Reznikoff.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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American Muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you might die of the truth.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my bufdfalo have found me.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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If two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Defeat is a fact and victory can be a fact. If the idea is good, it will survive defeat, it may even survive the victory.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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It's to a younger people's advantage to work with evolving computer technologies that provide so many ways to explore the use and distribution of text, including sound, images and motion.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Broad-streeted Richmond . . . The trees in the streets are old trees used to living with people, Family trees that remember your grandfather's name.
Stephen Vincent Benet