Stanley Kunitz Quotes

We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.

Stanley Kunitz

Toward dawn we shared with youyour hour of desolation,the huge lingering passionof your unearthly out cry,as you swung your blind headtowards us and laboriously openeda bloodshot, glistening eye,in which we swam with terror and recognition.

Stanley Kunitz

What makes the engine go?Desire, desire, desire.

Stanley Kunitz

End with an image and don't explain.

Stanley Kunitz

Mind's acres are forever green: Oh, IShall keep perpetual summer here; I shallRefuse to let one startled swallow die,Or, from the copper beeches, one leaf fall.

Stanley Kunitz

...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.

Stanley Kunitz

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

Stanley Kunitz

Darling, do you rememberthe man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.

Stanley Kunitz

In my darkest night,when the moon was coveredand I roamed through wreckage,a nimbus-clouded voicedirected me:“Live in the layers,not on the litter.”Though I lack the artto decipher it,no doubt the next chapterin my book of transformationsis already written.I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz

I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.

Stanley Kunitz