Rex Stout

I really mean what I say. A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.

Of course the modern detective story puts off its best tricks till the last, but Doyle always put his best tricks first and that's why they're still the best ones.

What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damn thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.

There are damn few great writers and I'm not one of them. While I could afford to I played with words. When I could no longer afford that I wrote for money.

There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.

ne trouble with living beyond your deserved number of years is that there's always some reason to live another year. And I'd like to live another year so that Nixon won't be President. If he's re-elected I'll have to live another four years.

Zelda Fitzgerald

By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future.

I am really only myself when I'm somebody else whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination.

I don't want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the human heart can hold.

I don't suppose I really know you very well - but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass that grows near old walls and that your hands are beautiful opening out of your sleeves and that the back of your head is a mossy sheltered cave when there is trouble in the wind and that my cheek just fits the depression in your shoulder.

Terry Pratchett

Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong

We are trying to unravel the Mighty Infinite using a language which was designed to tell one another where the fresh fruit was.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

Imagination, notintelligence, made us human.

The pen is mightier than thesword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

I don't like the place at all. It's all wrong. An imposition on the Landscape...

I save about twenty drafts — that's ten meg of disc space — and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped.

When they're standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment.

Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel?

Federico García Lorca

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.

The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the crowd broke the windows
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

The still pool of air
under the branch of echo.

The still pool of water
under a frond of stars.

The still pool of your mouth
under a thicket of kisses.

Charles Bukowski

A Challenge To The Dark

shot in the eye 
shot in the brain 
shot in the ass 
shot like a flower in the dance 

Alone With Everybody

the flesh covers the bone 
and they put a mind 
in there and 
sometimes a soul, 
and the women break 
vases against the walls 
and the men drink too 
much 
and nobody finds the 
one 
but keep 
looking 
crawling in and out 
of beds. 
flesh covers 
the bone and the 
flesh searches 
for more than 
flesh. 

there's no chance 
at all: 
we are all trapped 
by a singular 
fate. 

nobody ever finds 
the one. 

the city dumps fill 
the junkyards fill 
the madhouses fill 
the hospitals fill 
the graveyards fill 

nothing else 
fills. 

Benjamin Zephaniah

Mirror mirror on the wall
Could you please return our ball
Our football went through your crack
You have two now
Give one back. 

In Hawaii they Hula
They Tango in Argentina
They Reggae in Jamaica
And they Rumba down in Cuba,
In Trinidad and Tobago
They do the Calypso
And in Spain the Spanish
They really do Flamenco. 

In the Punjab they Bhangra
How they dance Kathak in India
Over in Guatemala
They dance the sweet Marimba,
Even foxes dance a lot
They invented the Fox Trot,
In Australia it's true
They dance to the Didgeridoo. 

Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors. 

Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years
Add lots of Norman French to some
Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously. 

Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,
Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,
Vietnamese and Sudanese. 

James Whitcomb Riley

One naked star has waded throughThe purple shadows of the night,
And faltering as falls the dew
It drips its misty light.

I have sipped, with drooping lashes,
Dreamy draughts of Verzenay;
I have flourished brandy-smashes
In the wildest sort of way;
I have joked with 'Tom and Jerry'
Till wee hours ayont the twal'--
But I've found my tea the very
Safest tipple of them all!

A barefoot boy! I mark him at his play -- 

 For May is here once more, and so is he, -- 

His dusty trousers, rolled half to the knee, 
And his bare ankles grimy, too, as they: 
Cross-hatchings of the nettle, in array 
Of feverish stripes, hint vividly to me 
Of woody pathways winding endlessly 
Along the creek, where even yesterday 
He plunged his shrinking body -- gasped and shook -- 
Yet called the water 'warm,' with never lack 
Of joy. And so, half enviously I look 
Upon this graceless barefoot and his track, -- 
His toe stubbed -- ay, his big toe-nail knocked back 
Like unto the clasp of an old pocketbook.

Ezra Pound

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world. 

I am a grave poetic hen
That lays poetic eggs
And to enhance my temperament
A little quiet begs.

We make the yolk philosophy,
True beauty the albumen.
And then gum on a shell of form
To make the screed sound human. 

Shel Silverstein

Baby , We got all the time in the world
So why don't we just take it nice and slow? 
We got everything we need 
To plant a lovin' seed 
And all the time we need to watch it grow. 

There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire -
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understand each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed.

When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

There's a polar bear 
In our Frigidaire- 
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there. 
With his seat in the meat 
And his face in the fish 
And his big hairy paws 
In the buttery dish, 
He's nibbling the noodles, 
He's munching the rice, 
He's slurping the soda, 
He's licking the ice. 
And he lets out a roar 
If you open the door. 
And it gives me a scare 
To know he's in there- 
That polary bear 
In our Fridgitydaire. 

Wallace Stevens

One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.

Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!

How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.

This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates.

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.