41 Quotes by Karl Shapiro

How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.

A man's house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery.

Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil's had the final say.

Every war is its own excuse. That's why they're all surrounded with ideals. That's why they're all crusades.

Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.

Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.

The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.

Lawyers love paper. They eat, sleep and dream paper. They turn paper into gold, and their files are colorful and their language neoclassical and calli-graphically bewigged.

Keelhaul the poets in the vestry chairs.