90 Quotes by Charles Simic

The world is beautiful but not sayable. That’s why we need art.

I left parts of myself everywhere, The way absent-minded people leave Gloves and umbrellas Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck.

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

There are people who live inside their heads and their intellects. It’s something one is born with and stuck with. It’s not something you make a decision about.

The stone is a mirror which works poorly. Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dimness, who’s to say? In the hush your heart sounds like a black cricket.

Dear Friedrich, the world’s still false, cruel and beautiful...

In the dark to see, you ass-scratchers! In the dark to see.

History is a cookbook. The tyrants are chefs. The philosophers write menus. The priests are waiters. The military men are bouncers. The singing you hear is the poets washing dishes in the kitchen.

Making art in America is about saving one’s soul.