44 Quotes by Dorianne Laux

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone’s.

I think what life experience has brought to my poems is compassion. When you work hard to make a living, raise a child up into the world, fail at marriage and try again, teach and fail, travel and fall, become ill, well again, weak but grateful, you learn patience, forbearance.

I write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.

I feel deep gratitude for the life poetry has allowed me to live. I know the life I could have lived without it. Both on the physical plain, and the soul plain. Poetry helps us endure.

I love people and psychology. As a writer, I’m not so interested in Fred getting from the living room to the car. I want to go inside Fred’s soul and play there.

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I’ve found to be true: writing begets writing.

I share my life experiences as a poet with my students. My poetic difficulties, joys, struggles and discoveries. If I read a new poem or essay or book I’m excited about, I bring it in.

I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that’s something someone else has to call you. It’s like bragging.

I’m not the only person in the world who is suffering. I’m trying to talk to the world, responding to those voices.