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Why does my muse only speak when she is uhnhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy.

Stevie Smith

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Stevie Smith
Age: 68 †
Born: 1902
Born: September 20
Died: 1971
Died: March 7
Illustrator
Novelist
Performing Artist
Poet
Writer
Hull
England
Florence Margaret Smith
Muse
Unhappy
Listen
Speak
Doe

More quotes by Stevie Smith

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Life in the [London] suburb is richer at the lower levels. At these levels the people are not self-conscious at all, they are at liberty to be as eccentric as they please, they do not know that they are eccentric.
Stevie Smith
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There can be no good art that is international. Art to be vigorous and gesund must use the material at hand.
Stevie Smith
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My heart was full of softening showers, I used to swing like this for hours, I did not care for war or death, I was glad to draw my breath.
Stevie Smith
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Nothing is more wistful than the scent of lilac, nor more robust than its woody stalk, for we must remember that it is a tree as well as a flower, we must try not to forget this.
Stevie Smith
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This Englishwoman is so refined, She has no bosom and no behind.
Stevie Smith
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I love Death because he breaks the human pattern and frees us from pleasures too prolonged as well as from the pains of this world. It is pleasant, too, to remember that Death lies in our hands he must come if we call him. ... I think if there were no death, life would be more than flesh and blood could bear.
Stevie Smith
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I may be smelly and I may be old, Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools, But where my fish float by I bless their swimming, And I like the people to bathe in me especially women.
Stevie Smith
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O happy dogs of England, Bark well at errand boys, If you lived anywhere else, You would not be allowed to make such an infernal noise.
Stevie Smith
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I am hungry to be interrupted For ever and ever amen O Person from Porlock come quickly And bring my thoughts to an end.
Stevie Smith
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Oh Lion in a peculiar guise, Sharp Roman road to Paradise, Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll With all my flesh, and keep my soul.
Stevie Smith
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It is the privilege of the rich To waste the time of the poor To water with tears in secret A tree that grows in secret That bears fruit in secret That ripened falls to the ground in secret And manures the parent tree Oh the wicked tree of hatred and the secret The sap rising and the tears falling.
Stevie Smith
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If a lady comes up to you and tells you that your dear mama is lying in a faint on the pavement round the corner, don't you believe her, don't have anything to do with her, do not go with her into the cab. It is the White Slave Traffic.
Stevie Smith
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I like to see cats in movement. A galloping cat is a fine sight. See it cross the road in a streak, cursed by the drivers of motor cars and buses, dodging the butcher's bicycle, coming safe to the kerb and bellying under its home gate.
Stevie Smith
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I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican.
Stevie Smith
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I only asked my friends to be friendly and polite, I found them indifferent and censorious The one I left to silence, the other to reproach: God send me over all such friends victorious.
Stevie Smith
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As Nature is always careless and indifferent Who sees, who steps, means nothing and this is pretty.
Stevie Smith
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But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever.
Stevie Smith
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People who are always praising the past And especially the time of faith as best Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.
Stevie Smith
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The sea was angry that day my friend, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.
Stevie Smith
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So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die, Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough, And Virtue also says: We are not yet friends enough.
Stevie Smith