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Randall Jarrell Quotes

Randall Jarrell quotes

American Poet May 6, 1914 – October 15, 1965

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  • Quotes Topics

  • life

Quotes

The days went by for him, all different and all the same. The boy was happy, and yet he didn't know that he was happy, exactly: he couldn't remember having been unhappy. If one day as he played at the edge of the forest some talking bird had flown down and asked him: "Do you like your life" he would not have known what to say, but would have asked the bird: "Can you not like it? Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell quote: "It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live..."
It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life. Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell quote: "The blind date that has stood you up: your life."
The blind date that has stood you up: your life. Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. Randall Jarrell
If I tell you that Mrs. Robbins had bad teeth and looked like a horse, you will laugh at me as a clich-monger; yet it is the truth. I can do nothing with the teeth; but let me tell you that she looked like a French horse, a dark, Mediterranean, market-type horse that has all its life begrudged to the poor the adhesive-tape on a torn five-franc note - that has tiptoed (to save its shoes) for centuries along that razor-edge where Greed and Caution meet. Randall Jarrell
The tags' chain stirs with the wind; and I sleep. Paid, dead, and a soldier. Who fights for his own life. Loses, loses: I have killed for my world, and am free. Randall Jarrell
When I was young and miserable and pretty. And poor, I'd wish. What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish. Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car. See me. Randall Jarrell
I see at least that all knowledge I wrung from the darkness-- that the darkness flung me-- is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing, the darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness and we call it wisdom. It is pain. Randall Jarrell
A poet is a person who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightening five or six times. Randall Jarrell
I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose. Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell quote: "A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in..."
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times. Randall Jarrell
Most of us know, now, that Rousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up the death camps. Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us. Randall Jarrell
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry. Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell quote: "To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than..."
To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all. Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell quote: "It's ugly, but is it art?"
It's ugly, but is it art? Randall Jarrell

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