I was thinking, “So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now.
ROBERT GRAVESThere is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
More Robert Graves Quotes
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The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
ROBERT GRAVES -
Well, we’ve been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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 -
I have done many impious things–no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.
ROBERT GRAVES -
For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.
ROBERT GRAVES -
Poet, never chase the dream. Laugh yourself and turn away. Mask your hunger, let it seem Small matter if he come or stay; But when he nestles in your hand at last, Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
ROBERT GRAVES -
As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
ROBERT GRAVES -
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.
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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 -
Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
ROBERT GRAVES -
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 -
Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
ROBERT GRAVES -
No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.
ROBERT GRAVES -
The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
ROBERT GRAVES -
The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
ROBERT GRAVES






