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All day yesterday she read a new kind of writing called poems. Some of them she read aloud. In places they were like chess—incomprehensible—and in other places they said strange and interesting things.

— Walter Tevis Mockingbird (1980)

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Poetry

More quotes by Walter Tevis

Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.

Mockingbird (1980)

He thought, looking at the cat, if only you were the intelligent species on this world. And then, smiling wryly, maybe you are.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

The woman beside me hesitated a moment, and then said softly, “This man is different, Mary. He’s a Reader.”

Mockingbird (1980)

“But, damn it, you’re not gods.”
“No, but have your gods ever saved you before?”
“I don’t know. No, of course not.”

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

It always horrified Bryce to see professors fawn on businessmen—the very men they ridiculed in their private conversations—whenever a research contract might be in the offing.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

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