Quotes About Expression

A veces en las tardes una cara Nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo; El arte debe ser como ese espejo Que nos revela nuestra propia cara. (At times in the evenings a face Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror; Art should be like that mirror Which reveals to us our own face.)

Todo el mundo sabe dónde encontrar la poesía. Y, cuando aparece, uno siente el roce de la poesía, ese especial estremecimiento.

Poetry is given to the poet. I don't think a poet can sit down at will and write. If he does, nothing worthwhile can come of it.

On lit ce qu'on aime, tandis qu'on écrit pas ce qu'on aimerait écrire, mais ce qu'on est capable d'écrire.

Un idioma es una tradición, un modo de sentir la realidad, no un arbitrario repertorio de símbolos. (A language is a tradition, a way of grasping reality, not an arbitrary assemblage of symbols.)

And life is, I am sure, made of poetry. Poetry is not alien--poetry is, as we will see, lurking round the corner. It may spring on us at any moment.

I know very little of my own work by heart, because I don't like what I write. In fact, I find myself personally expressed far better in the writings of other poets than in my own, because I know all my mistakes—I know all the chinks and all the padding, I know that a particular line is weak, and so on. I read other poets in a different way; I don't look too closely at them.

Desvario laborioso e empobrecedor é o de compor vastos livros; o de espraiar por quinhentas páginas uma ideia cuja perfeita exposição oral cabe em poucos minutos.

Casi no soy, pero mis versos ritman la vida y su esplendor. Yo fui Walt Whitman.

Perhaps in order to write a really great book, you must be rather unaware of the fact. You can slave away at it and change every adjective to some other adjective, but perhaps you can write better if you leave the mistakes.

Os meus livros Os meus livros (que não sabem que existo) São uma parte de mim, como este rosto De têmporas e olhos já cinzentos Que em vão vou procurando nos espelhos E que percorro com a minha mão côncava. Não sem alguma lógica amargura Entendo que as palavras essenciais, As que me exprimem, estarão nessas folhas Que não sabem quem sou, não nas que escrevo. Mais vale assim. As vozes desses mortos Dir-me-ão para sempre.

If you ask me why I wrote "A thousand tambourines of crystal, wounded the light of daybreak –Mil panderos di cristal, herían la madruga," I will tell you that I saw them in the hands of trees and angels, but I cannot say more: I cannot explain their meaning. And that is how it should be. Through poetry a man more quickly reaches the cutting edge that the philosopher and the mathematician silently turn away from.

El poema gana si adivinamos que es la manifestación de un anhelo, no la historia de un hecho.

Parlare é incorrere in tautologie.

La frase quería ser ingeniosa y adiviné que no era la primera vez que la pronunciaba. Supe después que no era característica de ella, pero lo que decimos no siempre se parece a nosotros.

Un gran libro como la Divina Comedia no es el aislado o azaroso capricho de un individuo; muchos hombres y muchas generaciones tendieron hacia él. Investigar sus precursores no es incurrir en una miserable tarea de carácter jurídico o policial; es indagar los movimientos, los tanteos, las aventuras, las vislumbres y las premoniciones del espíritu humano.

I think of myself as being essentially a reader. I have ventured into writing, but I think what I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes—yet one writes not what one would like to write but what one is able to write.

has gastado los años y te han gastado, y todavía no has escrito el poema.

Language is an efficient ordering of the world's enigmatic abundance. Verbiage for Poems

Omettere sempre una parola, ricorrere a metafore inette e a perifrasi evidenti, é forse il modo piú enfatico di indicarla.

A writer lives. The task of being a poet is not completed at a fixed schedule. No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.

Nouns are abbreviations. Instead of saying cold, sharp, burning, unbreakable, shining, pointy, we utter dagger; - Verbiage for Poems

Comprendí que el trabajo del poeta no estaba en la poesía; estaba en la invención de razones para que la poesía fuera admirable;

En una ocasión le pregunté a Alfonso Reyes por qué publicamos, y Reyes me contestó: «Publicamos para no tener que pasarnos la vida corrigiendo borradores».