John Berryman
We must travel in the direction of our fear.Collection: Travel
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.
Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.
The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.
You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.Collection: Writing
So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.Collection: Vanity
Two daiquiris withdrew into a corner of a gorgeous room and one told the other a lie.Collection: Lying
I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.Collection: Artist
I can offer you only: this world like a knifeCollection: Knives
This world is gradually becoming a place Where I do not care to be any more.Collection: World
Praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.Collection: Vanity
I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.Collection: Life
These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. They are only meant to terrify & comfort.Collection: Song
That is our ‘pointed task. Love & die.Collection: Tasks
One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.Collection: Writing
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored means you have no inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored.Collection: Mother
We are using our own skins for wallpaper and we cannot win.Collection: Winning
something has been said for sobriety but very little.Collection: Beer
I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature.Collection: Bored
Offering Dragons quarter is no good, they regrow all their parts and come on again. They have to be killed.Collection: Funny
We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.Collection: Reason
There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).Collection: Wall
Them lady poets must not marry, pal.Collection: Pals
Wishin' was dyin' but I gotta make it all this way to that bed on these feet.Collection: Feet
I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will depend on my being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short of senile dementia.Collection: Cancer
I cry. Evil dissolves, & love, like foam; that love. Prattle of children powers me home, my heart claps like the swan's under a frenzy of who love me & who shine.Collection: Children
Literature bores me, especially great literatureCollection: Literature
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearnCollection: Sea