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My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost — that it is born again.

— James Fenton An Introduction to English Poetry (2002)

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Luck

More quotes by James Fenton

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world.

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.

The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting.

An Introduction to English Poetry (2002)

Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in its origins, its transmission was oral.

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In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1601)

O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

Horace Satires (-35)

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Attribution

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