Wallace Stevens Quotes

... unreal things have a reality of their own, in poetry as elsewhere.

The imagination is one of the forces of nature.

Let be be finale of seem,
the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

There are men of the East, he said, who are the East. There are men of a province who are that province. There are men of a valley who are that valley.

He might take habit, whether from wave or phrase, Or power of the wave, or deepened speech, Or a leaner being, moving in on him, Of greater aptitude and apprehension, As if the waves at last were never broken, As if the language suddenly, with ease, Said things it had laboriously spoken.

These external regions, what do we fill them with Except reflections

The operation of the imagination in life is more significant than its operation in or in relation to works of art... in life what is important is the truth as it is, while in arts and letters what is important is truth as we see it.

Not to be realized because not to Be seen, not to be loved nor hated because Not to be realized.

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne. We shall return at twilight from the lecture Pleased that the irrational is rational,<p>Until flicked by feeling, in a gildered street, I call you by name, my green, my fluent mundo.

A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.

It is not in the premise that reality
Is a solid. It may be a shade that traverses
A dust, a force that traverses a shade.

The great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of earth remains to be written.

From oriole to crow, note the decline
In music. Crow is realist. But, then,
Oriole, also, may be realist.

Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!

I play. But this is what I think.