Quote

The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

Wallace Stevens

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Blackbirds
River
Flying
Rivers
Moving
Must
Blackbird

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

Image
The figures of the past go cloaked. They walk in mist and rain and snow And go, go slowly, but they go.
Wallace Stevens
Image
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
Wallace Stevens
Image
One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.
Wallace Stevens
Image
It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The poet represents the mind in the act of defending us against itself.
Wallace Stevens
Image
One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
Wallace Stevens
Image
If the hero is not a person, the emblem Of him, even if Xenophon, seems To stand taller than a person stands, has A wider brow, large and less human Eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body Of a primitive.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Imagination...is the irrepressible revolutionist.
Wallace Stevens
Image
They said, 'You have a blue guitar, / You do not play things as they are.' / The man replied, 'Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar.'
Wallace Stevens
Image
What's down below is in the past Like last night's crickets, far below.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Soldier, there is a war between the mind And sky, between thought and day and night. It is For that the poet is always in the sun, Patches the moon together in his room To his Virgilian cadences, up down, Up down. It is a war that never ends.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The imperfect is our paradise.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The reading of a poem should be an experience. Its writing must be all the more so.
Wallace Stevens
Image
At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
Wallace Stevens
Image
On a few words of what is real in the world I nourish myself. I defend myself against Whatever remains.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.
Wallace Stevens
Image
True villains are extremely photogenic.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Wallace Stevens