James Tate Quotes

#1. We are in a tight corner, now, I agree. But we have been in tight corners before and come out of them. You have to be brave a little longer.

Mary Hoffman

#2. I couldn't even picture Mavis's face anymore. It was sad. She was being erased. I wanted to put my finger on her forehead, but there was nothing there.

James Tate

#3. almost exquisite, the slight madness

James Tate

#4. I love my funny poems, but I'd rather break your heart. And if I can do both in the same poem, that's the best.

James Tate

#5. Something should always change in a poem. The persona should learn something.

James Tate

#6. William Waltz will take me through 'the buzz and clamor in a forest of hearts.' Adventures in the Lost Interiors of America is an adventure, I will go on this adventure with Waltz as a skillful, faithful, compass-true guide. I love this book.

James Tate

#7. What do you think? The last party she threw for you, you
came home with an inflatable cock on your head as a tiara, totally drunk,
singing 'Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!' and carrying a huge basket full of sex toys.

Elle Aycart

#8. do small things well each day. Develop your intellectual base a little bit more. Be more loving. Be more innovative. Take more risks. Develop deeper relationships.

Robin S. Sharma

#9. The challenge is always to find the ultimate in the ordinary horseshit.

James Tate

#10. In You Are Not Dead Wendy Xu breaks all the old rules that have never done us any favors anyway. She writes beautifully, noticing who we are, and letting us see ourselves with a little more humanity, a little more humor, a little more humility. I'm happy to have read this book.

James Tate

#11. I can't know entirely what's at stake beforehand; you find out as you go. I love to take a poem, for instance, that starts with something seemingly frivolous or inconsequential and then grows in gravity until by the end it's something very serious.

James Tate

#12. If you laughed earlier in the poem, and I bring you close to tears in the end, that's the best.

James Tate

#13. The Labour party has done more than any other to address gender inequalities, through legislation and other means, and to increase women's representation in politics, which has led to recent increases in the number of female politicians.

Lucy Powell

#14. Everybody who was anybody seemed to be going to a meeting, the glowworm, who was a solipsist, the lemur who was not.

James Tate

#15. When you don't sleep, you start to hallucinate, and that's not good.

James Tate

#16. The Internet is empowering everybody. It's empowering Democrats. It's empowering dictators. It's empowering criminals. It's empowering people who are doing really wonderful and creative things.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#17. I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry.

James Tate

#18. I am not a part of this home any longer. I am a tiny thing created by indifferent scientists. I am an experiment, a mechanical bee placed near the hive. The real bees were happy being bees until I came along and gave them all the false information that destroyed their little lives.

James Tate

#19. I like to start with the ordinary, and then nudge it, and then think, 'What happens next, what happens next?'

James Tate

#20. Stealing a spaceship shouldn't be this easy.

Mindee Arnett

#21. Dust is watching life's talk show.

James Tate

#22. Having gray hair doesn't matter
but having gray matter matters.

James Tate

#23. I love going to art galleries. The Tate Modern is one of my favourite things to do. But I don't invest in the history of it and I don't read up on it. I am a guy who would buy a print rather than buy an original.

James McAvoy

#24. He is being nibbled to death by ducks.

--More Later, Less the Same

James Tate

#25. I was just sitting on my bed in a dormitory room, and I started writing. The thing that was magic about it was that once you put down one word, you could cross it out. I figured that out right away. I put down 'mountain,' and then I'd go, 'No - 'valley.' That's better.'

James Tate

#26. When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter, it's up to the poet.

James Tate

#27. Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.

James Tate