Robert Penn Warren Quotes


"The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: Poetry)

"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: Life, End, Light, Man, May, Myth)

"I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: Glory, Poems, Writing)

"How do poems grow? They grow out of your life."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: Life, Poems)

"For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: Autobiography, Self)

"I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: First, Pain, Writing)