If you don't fill your days with love, you are wasting your life.
James Broughton

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.
James Broughton

Most poets in their youth begin in adolescent sadness. I find it more rewarding to end in gladness.
James Broughton

Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be.
James Broughton

My earliest poems sing of the absolute necessity of allowing love to invade and pervade one's life. That can make the miracle happen in reality. Try it.
James Broughton

My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.
James Broughton

My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.
James Broughton

Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is.
James Broughton

Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.
James Broughton

Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite.
James Broughton

The American public does not know poets exist.
James Broughton

The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.
James Broughton

The only limits are, as always, those of vision.
James Broughton

The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy.
James Broughton

Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.
James Broughton

True delicacy is not a fragile thing.
James Broughton

Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open.
James Broughton

Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.
James Broughton