Robert Penn Warren Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• A symbol serves to combine heart and intellect.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Heart, Intellect, Symbols

  5 Copy quote

• The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Writing, Confusion, Ordinary

  Robert Penn Warren (1989). “New and selected essays”, Random House Inc

  29 Copy quote

• A young man's ambition - to get along in the world and make a place for himself - half your life goes that way, till you're 45 or 50. Then, if you're lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Ambition, Men, Age

  The New York Times, June 2, 1981.

  13 Copy quote

• So little time we live in Time,
  And we learn all so painfully,
  That we may spare this hour's term
  To practice for Eternity.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Time, Practice, May

  Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (1998). “The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren”, p.66, LSU Press

  6 Copy quote

• In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

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• In separateness only does love learn definition.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Doe, Definitions, Separateness

  Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (1998). “The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren”, p.71, LSU Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Meaningful, Writing, Men

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

  25 Copy quote

• Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Inspirational, Motivational, History

  Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, James A. Grimshaw (1998). “Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence”, p.15, University of Missouri Press

  27 Copy quote

• There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Rain, Night, Car

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.192, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• I longed to know the world's name.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Names, World, Knows

  Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (1998). “The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren”, p.340, LSU Press

  21 Copy quote

• Tell me a story of deep delight.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Stories, Delight, Storytelling

  Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (1998). “The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren”, p.267, LSU Press

  21 Copy quote

• Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?

  Robert Penn Warren

  Happiness, Self, Break Out

  11 Copy quote

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

  Robert Penn Warren

  Self, Poetry, Understanding

  1985 In the New York Times, 12 May.

  8 Copy quote

• Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something (All The King's Men)

  Robert Penn Warren

  Kings, Men, Sin

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.235, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  16 Copy quote

• Your business as a writer is not to illustrate virtue but to show how a fellow may move toward it or away from it.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Moving, Vices, May

  Robert Penn Warren, Floyd C. Watkins, John T. Hiers (1980). “Robert Penn Warren talking: interviews, 1950-1978”, Random House (NY)

  4 Copy quote

• The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Meaningful, Men, Poetry

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

  9 Copy quote

• They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.

  Robert Penn Warren

  People, Relation, Term

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.192, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Mother, Father, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• America was based on a big promise--a great big one: the Declaration of Independence. When you have to live with that in the house, that's quite a problem--particularly when you've got to make money and get ahead, open world markets, do all the things you have to, raise your children, and so forth. America is stuck with its self-definition put on paper in 1776, and that was just like putting a burr under the metaphysical saddle of America--you see, that saddle's going to jump now and then and it pricks.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Children, America, Self

  13 Copy quote

• For whatever you live is life.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.359, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?

  Robert Penn Warren

  Thinking, Trying, Asking

  Robert Penn Warren, Floyd C. Watkins, John T. Hiers (1980). “Robert Penn Warren talking: interviews, 1950-1978”, Random House (NY)

  12 Copy quote

• Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.

  Robert Penn Warren

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• The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.

  Robert Penn Warren

  People, Luck, Needs

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

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

  Robert Penn Warren

  Writing, Scratches, Annoying

  1969 In the New York Times, 16 Dec.

  9 Copy quote

• For the truth is a terrible thing.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Truth Is, Terrible, Terrible Things

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.516, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

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