The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
Quotations
Poet
A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.
-Jay Z
"Decoded"
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-T. S. Eliot
"Dante"
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
-Walt Whitman
It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.
-Dejan Stojanović
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-Alfred De Musset
"Le Poète déchu"
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
-René Char
