F. L. Lucas Quotes

A simile is just a metaphor with the scaffolding still up.

The thing about metaphors is that, if you give them away, you give away the mystery.

The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

I don't like allegory.

I am a consummate metaphor addict.

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.

Metaphor is embodied in language.

You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.

Even in a less exaggerated description, any verbal account of a person is bound to find itself employing an assortment of waterfalls, lightning rods, landscapes, birds, etc.

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute.

Life is like an analogy.

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

Ray Bradbury taught me the importance of metaphor and simile and poetic style.

I don't ever get too literal.

It's all like an ocean!" cried Dostoevski. I say it's all like cellophane.

The word "metaphor" means carrying something from one place to another . . . and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word "metaphor" is a metaphor. I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining and apple in someone's eye doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

I love metaphor the way some people love junk food.

I don't know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes.

A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject; must show it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to recommend it.... That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short episode.

Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.