Verses Quotes - Page 14

• I don't mind a repetitive chorus; I mind repetitive verse. I mean, it's the same amount of space. Why would you have only three diamonds if you can have six?

  Lou Reed

  Mean, Space, Mind

  "Lou Reed: What I've Learned" by Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• No verse is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.

  Ezra Pound

  Jobs, Truth, Men

  Ezra Pound, Richard Sieburth (2010). “New Selected Poems and Translations”, p.362, New Directions Publishing

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• I use three main tools in writing: instinct, hard work and dumb luck. Dumb luck is missing a train and, while you wait for the next one, writing a key word, line or verse. When this happens often enough you begin to believe in Fate.

  David Massengill

  Believe, Hard Work, Writing

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• The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, May, Delight

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• Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.

  Russell Baker

  May, Solemnity, Caution

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• So how can a poet-an intelligent, serious poet-write mystical verse now? The poetry of Adam Zagajewski provides the beginning of an answer to this question.

  Adam Kirsch

  Writing, Intelligent, Answers

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• Sometimes he would advise me to read poetry, and would send me in his letters quantities of verses and whole poems, which he wrote from memory. 'Read poetry,' he wrote: 'poetry makes men better.' How often, in my later life, I realized the truth of this remark of his! Read poetry: it makes men better.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Memories, Men, Letters

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• A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Poetry, May

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.223, Penguin

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• Apropos, is not the Scotch phrase 'Auld Lang Syne' exceedingly expressive? I shall give you the verses on the other sheet. The words of 'Auld Lang Syne' are good, but the music is an old air, the rudiments of the modern tune of that name. ... Dare to be honest and fear no labor. ... Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. ... Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure thrill the deepest notes of woe. ... Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

  Robert Burns

  Cutting, Men, Scotch

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• If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say: 'Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!' you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.

  Brenda Ueland

  Mother, Children, Doors

  Brenda Ueland (1987). “If You Want to Write”

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• Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Together, May

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• I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.

  Boethius

  Music, Song, Real

  Boethius (2012). “The Consolation of Philosophy”, p.1, Courier Corporation

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• We worked the medley on side two of "Abbey Road" out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India a year before. So there was just a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine.

  George Harrison

  Music, Song, Years

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• It would be nice to abandon the verse-chorus-bridge structure completely, and make it so none of these things are definable. ... Make up new names for them. Instead of a bridge, you can call it a highway, or an overpass. ... Music should never be harmless. ... I remember from my earliest years, people speaking, you know, in a certain kind of rhythm and telling stories and sharing experiences in a way that was different in Indian country than it was other places. And I was really struck by this and obviously very affected by it, because it's always come out in my songs.

  Robbie Robertson

  Country, Song, Nice

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• I had more verses . Owen Bradley said, 'Loretta, there's already been one El Paso and we'll never have another one. Get in that room and start taking some of those verses off.' Yeah, I took six verses off.

  Loretta Lynn

  Rooms, Six, Said

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• Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.

  Moliere

  Writing, Men, Honorable Man

  "Le Misanthrope" by Moliere, act IV, sc. i, 1666.

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• It is generally said, "Past labors are pleasant," Euripides says, for you all know the Greek verse, "The recollection of past labors is pleasant."
  [Lat., Vulgo enim dicitur, Jucundi acti labores: nec male Euripides: concludam, si potero, Latine: Graecum enim hunc versum nostis omnes: Suavis laborum est proeteritorum memoria.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Past, Greek, Males

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• Making verses is almost as common as taking snuff, and God can tell what miserable stuff people carry about in their pockets, and offer to all their acquaintances, and you know one cannot refuse reading and taking a pinch.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Reading, People, Pockets

  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1825). “The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Including Her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays, Form Her Genuine Papers”, p.262

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• Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.

  Edith Sitwell

  Lying, Book, Giving

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• It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to.

  Scott Avett

  Song, Writing, Ideas

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• All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
  One time it was a woman's face, or worse--
  The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
  Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
  Than this accustomed toil.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hands, Land, Poetry

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.38, Hayes Barton Press

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• My freestyling ability is nonexistent. I can't even write a verse if I tried to sit anywhere and write one. Being a good rapper is hard to do. I'm a good Rapaport, but that's about it.

  Michael Rapaport

  Writing, Rapper, Ability

  "Actor Michael Rapaport’s Rap Quest". Interview with Aaron Ross, www.motherjones.com. July 01, 2011.

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• I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Stories, Patterns

  Jorge Luis Borges (1998). “Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations”, p.76, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• WhenTime shall turn those amber locks to grey, My verse again shall gild and make them gay.

  Michael Drayton

  Time, Gay, Locks

  'England's Heroical Epistles' (1597) 'Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, to the Lady Geraldine' l. 123

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• She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.

  Joe Hill

  Sweet, Book, Snacks

  Joe Hill (2013). “NOS4R2”, p.73, Hachette UK

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