Poetry has to be something more than a conception of the mind. It has to be a revelation of nature. Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Perception
What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one’s meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Reality
Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Fiction, Authors & Writing
How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.
—Wallace Stevens
The bread of life is better than any souffle.
—Wallace Stevens
Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Thought, Thoughts
Intolerance respecting other people’s religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people’s art.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Tolerance
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Stanley Kunitz American Poet
Archibald MacLeish American Poet, Dramatist
Robert Frost American Poet
Theodore Roethke American Poet
Marianne Moore American Poet
Sylvia Plath American Poet, Novelist
Stephen Vincent Benet American Poet
W. H. Auden British-born American Poet
Robert Penn Warren American Novelist, Poet
e. e. cummings American Poet, Writer, Painter