Robert Penn WarrenThinkers

The Past is a rebuke to the present.

A Poem is but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding, the deepest part of autobiography.

The Poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life.

The Poet is a terribly sensitive person, and one of the things he is most sensitive about is cash.

The Poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem.

Poetry is a Kind of Unconscious Autobiography.

The World is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter.