Anthony Hecht Quotes

#1. Children know from a remarkably early age that things are being kept from them, that grown-ups participate in a world of mysteries.

Anthony Hecht

#2. I believe in reincarnation," [Bjorn] said.
I KNOW.
"I tried to live a good life. Does that help?"
THAT'S NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE ... SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION ... YOU'LL BE BJORN AGAIN.

Terry Pratchett

#3. Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system.

James Richardson

#4. Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs.

Anthony Hecht

#5. I'm filled with admiration, delight, and gratitude at discovering James Lasdun's poems in A Jump Start. He has wit, speed, intelligence, a keen eye, precision, and imagination of a high order.

Anthony Hecht

#6. It's a collaborative art form where we can both learn something from the other. That's what you want from the relationship with a director.

Cam Gigandet

#7. I don't shoot kittens with balls of wool. I don't shoot sunsets. What draws me? Ironic, surreal, unexplained, timely moments.

Graham Nash

#8. I look and look, / As though I could be saved simply by looking

Anthony Hecht

#9. Doctors of Science, what is man that he
Should hope to come to a good end?
The best is not to have been born.

Anthony Hecht

#10. Truth is not ... something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]

Steve Hagen

#11. If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

Honore De Balzac

#12. I've always found allegories kind of comforting. When you encounter people named Liar and Abstinence, you might not be crazy about them, but you know exactly what you're getting into.

Marisa De Los Santos

#13. If the heart has its reasons, perhaps the body
Has its own lumbering sort of carnal spirit,
Felt in the tingling bruises of collision,
And known to captains as esprit de corps.

Anthony Hecht

#14. Know that a rose without thorns has never been plucked

Shota Rustaveli

#15. I had the gift, and arrived at the technique
That called up spirits from the vasty deep...

Anthony Hecht

#16. Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

Anthony Hecht

#17. A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.

Anthony Hecht

#18. Brilliant. [Lasdun] seems to me certainly among the most gifted, vivid, and deft poets now writing in English, and far better than many who are more famous. His capacities are solidly established; his promise is nearly infinite.

Anthony Hecht

#19. Educate every child to have a good head, good heart and kind spirit.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#20. There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

Anthony Hecht

#21. It doesn't seem to me strange that children should like the macabre, the sensational, and the forbidden.

Anthony Hecht

#22. Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew.

Anthony Hecht

#23. I think athletically I can be okay with any role, but I'm willing to go over and beyond for my work. My fan base is so strong and loyal, and they wanna see me evolve. I'm where I'm supposed to be and I want to challenge myself with the people that are doing it real big.

Pooch Hall

#24. Dating someone on the opposite end of the happy spectrum teaches you an incredible amount of patience.

Chris Pine