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There is one story and one story only.

Robert Graves

The decline of true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people’s wills.
ROBERT GRAVES

Character Culture Grow Hour Mature People Perfection Personality
I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.
ROBERT GRAVES

Blow Bow Champion Horse Last Reward Rome Salt Tide Wind Won
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

Blow Bow Champion Hobby Idea Reading Reward Talk Tide Wind Won Writing
No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation – in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least.
ROBERT GRAVES

Acceptance Belief Himself Honesty Logic
There’s a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.
ROBERT GRAVES

Change Flashback Happy Joy Life Moment Movement Sea Summer Weather Wind
I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and – if he is lucky enough – know the love of an honest woman.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beautiful Believe Impress Impressive Passion Poet Poetry Result Saying Simplicity Try
Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.
ROBERT GRAVES

Connect Experiment Field Language Link Motivation Poet Practical Risk Scientist Success Theory
I don’t really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn’t create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beautiful Effect Impress Impressive Noble People Poet Poetry Relation Result Saying Simplicity Widely
I revise the manuscript till I can’t read it any longer, then I get somebody to type it. Then I revise the typing. Then it’s retyped again. Then there’s a third typing, which is the final one. Nothing should then remain that offends the eye.
ROBERT GRAVES

Book Change Emotion Eyes Feeling Final God Manuscript Offend
Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.
ROBERT GRAVES

Beautiful Hand Impress Impressive Noble Poet Poetry Result Saying Simplicity Try
Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.
ROBERT GRAVES

Achieve Beautiful Effect Impress Impressive Noble Poet Poetry Result Saying Simplicity Widely
Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart’s desire.
ROBERT GRAVES

Affection Believe Children Emotion Fire
She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow.
ROBERT GRAVES

Fall Flower Heaven Journey Life Luck Proud Sleep Spark Waiting
When I’m killed, don’t think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there’s one thing that I know well, I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell!
ROBERT GRAVES

Goodness Hell Kill Myself Thinking Tolerance
Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
ROBERT GRAVES

Answer Genius Situation Supply
Love at first sight’some say misnaming Discovery of twinned helplessness Against the huge tug of procreation. But friendship at first sight? This also Catches fiercely at the surprised heart So that the cheek blanches then blushes.
ROBERT GRAVES

Crowd Desire Discovery Fire Goal Heart Hide Life Rise Sight Street Want Won

There is one story and one story only.

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There is one story and one story only.

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