175 Quotes by Marianne Moore

[On her use of quotations:] When a thing has been said so well that it could not be said better, why paraphrase it? Hence my writing, is, if not a cabinet of fossils, a kind of collection of flies in amber.

In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.

I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.

the small tuft of fronds or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth, to droop or rise

The mind is an enchanting thing.

he who gives quickly gives twice / in nothing so much as in a letter.

Hindered characters / seldom have mothers / in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.

When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ...

Concurring hands divide flax for damask that when bleached by Irish weather has the silvered chamois-leather water-tightness of a skin.