70 Quotes by Stanley Kunitz

We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.

The sand whispered, Be separate, the stones taught me, Be hard.

I have walked through many lives,some of them my own,and I am not who I was,though some principle of beingabides, from which I strugglenot to stray.

Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.

A single glance: a sudden dart of painstitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .

I can scarcely wait till tomorrowwhen a new life begins for me,as it does each day,as it does each way.

A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.

The supreme morality of art is to endure.

Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive.