Anne Stevenson Quotes

Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.

Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

Writing is incredibly important to me as a way of handling the world, understanding how it works.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

I don't know why I write what I write.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

Pondering, which means to weigh mentally, to deliberate, to meditate, can achieve the opening of the spiritual eyes of one's understanding.

Sometimes writing it is a good way to understand something.

Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking.

To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words- to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas.

I can't remember why or how I started writing, but I think it was always a way of making sense of the world.

They only babble who practise not reflection.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me.

I think that's one of the most important things that books do: not to teach you anything, but to help you teach yourself by just being in the world of the book and having your own thoughts and reactions and noticing your own reactions and thoughts and learning about yourself that way.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

Writing is a very focused form of meditation. Just as good as sitting in a lotus position.

Night is the mother of thoughts.

Every now and then, I have a deep thought.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.