Marianne Moore Quotes

Your thorns are the best part of you.

The self does not realize itself most fully when self-realization is its most constant aim.

You've the beat
of a dancer to a measure or harmonious rush
of a porpoise at the prow where the racers all win easily — like centaurs' legs in tune, as when kettledrums compete;
nose rigid and suede nostrils spread, a light left hand on the
rein, till
well — this is a rhapsody.

But don’t give me, if I can’t have the dress,
a trip to Greenland, or grim
trip to the moon. The moon should come here. Let him
make the trip down, spread on my dark floor some dim
marvel, and if a success
that I stoop to pick up and wear,
I could ask nothing more.

one must not borrow a long white beard and tie it on
and threaten with the scythe of time the casually curious

I think books are chiefly responsible for my dogged self determined efforts to write; books & verisimilitude; I like to describe things.

Poetry
...
... a place for the genuine,
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise

Music should be directed by the ear, poetry by the imagination

One ventures, commits one's self, and if readers are not pleased, one can perhaps please one's self and earn that slender right to persevere.

Appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.

... we
do not admire what
we cannot understand.

What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.

Staff and effigy of the animal which by shedding its skin is a sign of renewal — the symbol of medicine.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

So he who strongly feels, behaves.