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The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing.

Wallace Stevens

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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Magnificent
Poetry
Belief
Nothing
Fury

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The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
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If ever the search for a tranquil belief should end, The future might stop emerging out of the past, Out of what is full of us yet the search And the future emerging out of us seem to be one.
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A violent order is disorder and a great disorder is an order. These two things are one.
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What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.
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To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.
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As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.
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One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
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Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.
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Words of the world are the life of the world.
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If sex were all, then every trembling hand Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
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The subject matter... is not that collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes.
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behold The approach of him whom none believes, Whom all believe that all believe, A pagan in a varnished car.
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I am the angel of Reality, Seen for a moment standing in the door.
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The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
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How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?
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New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
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The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks And far beyond the discords of the wind.
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Just as my fingers on these keys make music, so the self-same sounds on my spirit make a music too.
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One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
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The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.
Wallace Stevens