Quotations

“Is that a real haiku, or did you write it yourself?” —Michael Dylan Welch

You can quote me on this. Okay, here’s a surprise—I didn’t write any of these, except for the preceding quotation (which is half stolen from Robert Creeley—and which I also have printed up as a T-shirt). The following links lead to some of my favourite quotations relating to haiku poetry and other kinds of writing. Many of these quotations come from my reading of the original sources, and others come from quotation books. I love to collect quotations, and have thousands more, not itemized here, that I dip into when writing essays. In Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose (New York: Grove Press, 2020, page 278), Kay Ryan says, “quotes by my favorites offer a double joy [in essays]. First . . . there is the attractiveness of what is quoted; and second, there is the pleasurable sensation of endless doors opening, author through author, all the way back to the first word.” See also Blurbs (a few quotations of my own) and On the Art of Writing Haiku.       +

“When walking, just walk. When sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.” —Yunmen

“The itch of a lost quotation in a book you cannot find.” —Hannah Sullivan, “The Sandpit After Rain”

“Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education bestowed on me, the ability to think in quotations.”

—Margaret Drabble, A Summer Bird-Cage

“People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations.” —Graham Greene

“Quotations . . . sound out ideas memorably—encapsulating larger debates in bonsai form.” —Dennis O’Driscoll, Quote Poet Unquote

“Like Montaigne, I quote others ‘in order to better express myself.’” —Dwight Garner, Garner’s Quotations

“Life itself is a quotation.” —Jorge Luis Borges