Steve Earle Quotes

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

Anyone who holds a pen these days thinks he or she is a poet.

Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.

I did literature at university, so I had a real relationship with poetry, but they don't make many films about the world of a poet.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.

Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature.

You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts - in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a tremendous education as an artist and also an enormous knowledge of literarture.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

I read mostly poetry.

Form is endlessly interesting to me, and I love poetry as a formal enterprise.

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

In its truest manifestation, where it gives judgments, poetry is super-luxury. It would be interesting to see what would happen to a High Court judge if he were forced to follow the true poetic formula, doing the job for love, being forced into pubs for relief.

Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.

One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.