31 Quotes by Guy Davenport

Reality was the keener for being fugitive, concealed, and doubtful...

I also wish I knew why millions of bright American children turn overnight into teenage nerds. The substitution of the automobile for the natural body, which our culture has effected in the most evil perversion of humanity since chivalry, is one cause; narcosis by drugs and Dionysian music is another.

The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.

Olson's Maximus and Zukofsky's 'A' are too symbolically and verbally complex, respectively, to command large audiences especially in an age when a college degree is becoming a certificate of illiteracy.

Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it.

Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.

Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.

Originality houses many rooms, and the views from the windows are all different.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.