Ted Kooser Quotes

#1. a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

Ted Kooser

#2. Don't talk to me about the stars, about how cold and indifferent they are, about the unimaginable distances. There are millions of stars within us that are just as far, and people like me sometimes burn up a whole life trying to reach them.

Ted Kooser

#3. I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a lot of old men and women who talked as if they were paying Western Union by the word.

Ted Kooser

#4. Just as a dancer, turning and turning, may fill the dusty light with the soft swirl of her flying skirts, our weeping willow
now old and broken , creaking in the breeze
turns slowly, slowly in the winter sun, sweeping the rusty roof of the barn with the pale blue lacework of her shadow.

Ted Kooser

#5. Sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

Ted Kooser

#6. The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way - engaging, compelling, even beautiful.

Ted Kooser

#7. A poem is a record of a discovery.

Ted Kooser

#8. His hands fluttered like birds,
each with a fancy silk ribbon
to weave into their nest,
as he stood at the mirror
dressing for work, waving hello
to himself with both hands.

Ted Kooser

#9. Valentine's Day is the poet's holiday.

Ted Kooser

#10. There's nothing wrong with delighting in what you do. In fact, most of the fun you'll have as a poet will come about during the process of writing.

Ted Kooser

#11. There are mornings when everything brims with promise, even my empty cup.

Ted Kooser

#12. When she left me
I stood out in the thunderstorm,
hoping to be destroyed by lightning.
It missed, first left, then right.

Ted Kooser

#13. This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness ...

Ted Kooser

#14. It is all around us, free, this wonderful life: clear jingle of tire chains, the laughter of ice that breaks under our boots. Each hour's a gift to those who take it up.

Ted Kooser

#15. If I don't take the risk, I'll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge.

Ted Kooser

#16. Keeping a journal is like taking good care of one's heart.

Ted Kooser

#17. Turtle has just one plan at a time, and every cell buys into it.

Ted Kooser

#18. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

Ted Kooser

#19. All night, this soft rain from The distant past. No wonder I sometimes Waken as a child.

Ted Kooser

#20. I farm a little plot of things to say, with not much frontage on the busy road.

Ted Kooser

#21. Mike Forsberg's images give us bright openings onto a world ... Here on the Great Plains both people and trees and everything else are in some way shaped by wind and weather. This book, too, has been shaped by where it comes from, and that's just a part of its beauty.

Ted Kooser

#22. She'd had little patience with darkness, and her heart
held only a measure of shadow. I touched
the warm dust of those colors, her tools,
and left there with light on the tips of my fingers.

Ted Kooser

#23. Wisdom is easy to carry but difficult to load.

Ted Kooser