70 Quotes by James Dickey

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I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.

You are bound, my hunch is, to make it just fine.

To live a very long time... is supposed to be the desired object of all human life. But it is not. The main thing is to ride the flood tide... How glorious it is to create! For those few moments of a lifetime when the stream is running full and deep: those are the justification for everything.

Those that are huntedKnow this as their life,Their reward: to walkUnder such trees in full knowledgeOf what is in glory above them,And to feel no fear.

What I want is to be willing to fail rather than stagnate.

A poet trains himself to stand out in a storm and be struck by lightning. If he is lucky enough to be struck six times, he becomes immortal. Randall Jarrell said it and he's right.

Poetry is a hazardous occupation, very hazardous. There may be bad things in there inside you that maybe you can't handle.

The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.