52 Quotes by Dana Gioia

I have to say that Grieg's relationship to Kees' property is problematic. Michael Grieg told me that Kees' parents said he could keep all the paintings, and things like that. I have no way of verifying that claim. Grieg did end up owning all the paintings, pictures, which he then began selling, ... It took me years to convince him to let me see what he had. I think I was probably the first person to be given access to it.

This is no longer as case of 'Johnny can't read,' ... It's Johnny won't read.'

It seems to me that awakening to the full potential of what your life might be – beyond the possibilities of your own family, your own class, your own race, your own neighborhood – that is one of the great gifts that art affords.

Money. You don’t know where it’s been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks!

This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished, for you, my love, my loss, my lesion, a rosary of words to count out time’s illusions, all the minutes, hours, days the calendar compounds as if the past existed somewhere like an inheritance still waiting to be claimed.

To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer’s identity.

I attended Catholic schools at a time when Latin was still a living ritual language.