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A poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience.

— Stephen Spender The Still Centre (1939)

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More quotes by Stephen Spender

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.

History is theirs whose language is the sun.

Ruins and Visions (1942)

The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State.

Life and the Poet (1942)

At dawn she lay with her profile at that angle
Which, when she sleeps, seems the carved face of an angel.

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Attribution

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