A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
Randall Jarrell

He thinks that Schiller and St Paul were just two Partisan Review editors.
Randall Jarrell

I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose.
Randall Jarrell

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
Randall Jarrell

If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.
Randall Jarrell

In the United States, there one feels free... Except from the Americans - but every pearl has its oyster.
Randall Jarrell

It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.
Randall Jarrell

One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
Randall Jarrell

The blind date that has stood you up: your life.
Randall Jarrell

The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.
Randall Jarrell


To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.
Randall Jarrell