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I had a perfect confidence, still unshaken, in books. If you read enough you would reach the point of no return. You would cross over and arrive on the safe side. There you would drink the strong waters and become addicted, perhaps demented — but a Reader.

— Helen Bevington

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More quotes by Helen Bevington

No matter what kind of verse a woman writes, nobody alive or dead deserves to be called a poetess.

When Found, Make a Verse of (1961)

One gender to walk the wide world in
Is the feminine,
A plight that — softly to a friend —
I can recommend.

Whenas in perfume Julia went,
Then, then, how sweet was the intent
Of that inexorable scent.

Victor Hugo was a passionate observer, partial to death scenes. He had an appetite for extinction, a man sure to be on hand at the sound of a death rattle or the passing of a funeral procession.

It seems an odd idea to my students that poetry, like all art, leads us away from itself, back to the world in which we live. It furnishes the vision. It shows with a sudden intense clarity what is already there.

When Found, Make a Verse of (1961)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Helen Bevington (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.