Robert Penn Warren Quotes - Page 4

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

  Robert Penn Warren

  Writing, Glory, Nancy

  1986 On being appointed the first US Poet Laureate. In the Washington Post, 27 Feb.

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• 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

  Pain, Writing, Done

  National Observer, March 12, 1977.

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• We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?

  Robert Penn Warren

  History, Prisoner

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• All I've tried to do (with my writing) is capture the essence of my time.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Writing, Essence, Capture

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• More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Past

  Robert Penn Warren's Acceptance speech for the 1970 National Medal for Literature, New York City, New York, December 2, 1970.

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• My only crime was being a man and living in the world of men, and you don't have to do special penance for that. The crime and the penance, in that case, coincide perfectly. They are identical.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Men, Special, World

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.500, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that.

  Robert Penn Warren

  History, Melodrama, Ifs

  Robert Penn Warren (2015). “The Legacy of the Civil War”, p.33, U of Nebraska Press

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• Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful exercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all the animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Life, Animal, Men

  "All the King's Men".

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• Dying--shucks! If you kin handle the living, what's to be afraid of the dying?

  Robert Penn Warren

  Dying, Handle, Ifs

  Robert Penn Warren (1988). “A Robert Penn Warren reader”, Vintage

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• There ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and keep your dignity? The human frame just ain't built that way.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Men, Way, Dignity

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• [A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Responsibility, House, World

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• For life is a fire burning along a piece of string--or is it a fuse to a powder keg which we call God?--and the string is what we don't know, our Ignorance, and the trail of ash, which, if a gust of wind does not come, keeps the structure of the string, is History, man's Knowledge, but it is dead, and when the fire has burned up all the string, then man's Knowledge will be equal to God's Knowledge and there won't be any fire, which is Life. Or if the string leads to a powder keg, then there will be a terrific blast of fire, and even the trail of ash will be blown completely away.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Ignorance, Men, Fire

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.226, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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