Robert Penn Warren

Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They are inexpensive and easy to procure.

I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

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.

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.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

Poets, we know, are terribly sensitive people, and in my observation one of the things they are most sensitive about is money.

If you are an idealist, it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

A young mans ambition is to get along in the world and make a place for himselfhalf your life goes that way till youre 45 or 50. Then if youre lucky you make terms with life you get released.

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.