90 Quotes by Charles Simic

Like many others, I grew up in an age that preached liberty and built slave camps.

Inside is where we meet everyone else; it's on the outside that we are truly alone.

The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.

The idea is to spin the wheel of metaphors and images until sparks of associations begin to fly for the reader.

I slept little, read a lot, and fell in love frequently.

One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.

In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.

Poetry is an orphan of silence.