Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
Stephen Sondheim

Many men of science and poets have in their own manner, by various ways and means, and aided by others, sought unceasingly to create a more tolerable world for everyone.
Eyvind Johnson

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.
Sharon Olds

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.
Robert Morgan

Maybe there are three or four really good poets in a generation.
Kenneth Koch

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.
Robert Frost

Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
Miguel De Cervantes

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.
Federico Fellini

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 favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets.
Rita Dove

My sisters were going out with artists and poets, and eventually it was the creative world which attracted me.
Luc Ferrari

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.
Muhammad Iqbal

Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.
Robert Graves

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

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.
Paul Muldoon

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.
Thomas Hardy

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.
Mary MacLane

One of my favorite poets, Neruda, writes close to the bone. Though I know only a little Spanish, I like to compare the Spanish and English lines and see how the translator worked.
Anita Diament

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.
Lucille Clifton