Conrad Aiken Quotes

Quotes about:

• The hiss was now becoming a roar - the whole world was a vast moving screen of snow - but even now it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep.

  Conrad Aiken

  Moving, Sleep, Snow

  Gerald R. Barrett, Thomas L. Erskine, Conrad Aiken (1972). “From fiction to film: Conrad Aiken's Silent snow, secret snow”

  47 Copy quote

• All lovely things will have an ending, all lovely things will fade and die; and youth, that's now so bravely spending, Will beg a penny by and by.

  Conrad Aiken

  Lovely, Pennies, Youth

  Conrad Aiken (1961). “Selected Poems”, p.273, Oxford University Press on Demand

  19 Copy quote

• Death is never an ending, death is a change; Death is beautiful, for death is strange; Death is one dream out of another flowing.

  Conrad Aiken

  Beautiful, Dream, Strange

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  4 Copy quote

• Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.

  Conrad Aiken

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Knows

  7 Copy quote

• The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, the eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, and lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.

  Conrad Aiken

  Dream, Rain, Answers

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  15 Copy quote

• Life is the thing--the song of life-- The eager plow, the thirsty knife!

  Conrad Aiken

  Life, Song, Knives

  Conrad Potter Aiken, “Youth Imperturbable”

  6 Copy quote

• It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb.

  Conrad Aiken

  Stars, Lying, Firefly

  Conrad Aiken (1964). “A seizure of limericks”

  7 Copy quote

• I love you, what star do you live on?

  Conrad Aiken

  I Love You, Stars, Love You

  Conrad Aiken (1918). “The Charnel Rose. Senlin: Biography and Other Poems”, p.74, Ardent Media

  4 Copy quote

• I ascend from darkness
  And depart on the winds of space for I know not where;
  My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
  And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.

  Conrad Aiken

  Morning, Keys, Wind

  Conrad Aiken (1961). “Selected Poems”, p.23, Oxford University Press on Demand

  6 Copy quote

• I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort - I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form - all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.

  Conrad Aiken

  Mean, Writing, Exercise

  "Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9". Interview with Robert Hunter Wilbur in September 1963, "The Paris Review", www.theparisreview.org. Winter - Spring 1968.

  14 Copy quote

• I'm afraid I wasn't much of a student, but my casual reading was enormous.

  Conrad Aiken

  Reading, Students, Casual

  8 Copy quote

• Forward into the untrodden! Courage, old man, and hold on to your umbrella!

  Conrad Aiken

  Men, Umbrella, Old Man

  Conrad Aiken (2015). “The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken”, p.41, Open Road Media

  10 Copy quote

• [At a musical concert:] . . . the music's pure algebra of enchantment.

  Conrad Aiken

  Music, Enchantment, Concerts

  15 Copy quote

• As poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry's office.

  Conrad Aiken

  Men, Office, Done

  "Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9". Interview with Robert Hunter Wilbur in September 1963, "The Paris Review", www.theparisreview.org. Winter - Spring 1968.

  6 Copy quote

• You know, without my telling you, how sometimes a word or name eludes you, and you seek it through running ghosts of shadow -- leaping at it, lying in wait for it to spring upon it, spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, you hear it, see it flash among the branches, and scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.

  Conrad Aiken

  Running, Lying, Spring

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  4 Copy quote

• We are the ghosts of the singing furies .

  Conrad Aiken

  Singing, Ghost, Fury

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  5 Copy quote

• The days, the nights, flow one by one above us. The hours go silently over our lifted faces. We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea. Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together. We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee.

  Conrad Aiken

  Wall, Sleep, Night

  Conrad Aiken (1920). “The House of Dust: A Symphony”

  4 Copy quote

• My heart has become as hard as a city street, the horses trample upon it, it sings like iron, all day long and all night long they beat, they ring like the hooves of time.

  Conrad Aiken

  Horse, Heart, Night

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  9 Copy quote

• No god save self, that is the way to live.

  Conrad Aiken

  God, Self, Way To Live

  7 Copy quote

• One is least sure of one's self, sometimes, when one is most positive.

  Conrad Aiken

  Self, Sometimes

  4 Copy quote

• I think that what's happening today, with all the young poets rushing from one college to another, lecturing at the drop of a hat and so on, is not too good; I think it might have a bad effect on a great many of the young poets. They - to quote Mark Twain - "swap juices" a little too much, so that they are in danger of losing their own identity and don't give themselves time enough in which to work out what's really of importance to them - they're too busy.

  Conrad Aiken

  College, Thinking, Rushing

  10 Copy quote

• I've tried it long ago, with hashish and peyote. Fascinating, yes, but no good, no. This, as we find in alcohol, is an escape from awareness, a cheat, a momentary substitution, and in the end a destruction of it.

  Conrad Aiken

  Long Ago, Alcohol, Peyote

  7 Copy quote

• Schoolchildren all over America are told to write to authors-often to authors whom they have never before heard of, whose work they are to young to understand in the least, and often in letters which are almost illiterate. If children are to be taught to respect the work of American poets I think some better way might be found to do so- some way which would not make such an inconsiderate demand on the author's time.

  Conrad Aiken

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• Time is a dream ... a destroying dream;
  It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;
  It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.

  Conrad Aiken

  Dream, Time, Wall

  Conrad Aiken (1920). “The House of Dust: A Symphony”

  4 Copy quote

• We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain. We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, but we know that we rose and walked, that after a while we shall lie down again.

  Conrad Aiken

  Pain, Lying, Roots

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  4 Copy quote

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