40Quotes by Charles Simic
Charles Simic, a celebrated Serbian-American poet, is renowned for his distinctive and evocative verse that delves into the realms of the surreal and the ordinary. Born in 1938 in Belgrade, Simic's early life experiences, including surviving the atrocities of World War II, deeply influenced his poetry, infusing it with themes of loss, memory, and the human condition. Simic's poetic language is marked by its simplicity and clarity, yet it possesses an air of mystery and introspection.
Throughout his prolific career, he has been awarded numerous prestigious literary honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, affirming his status as a master of his craft. As a poet and essayist, Simic has tackled a wide array of subjects, from the haunting nature of dreams to the subtleties of everyday life. His ability to find beauty and profundity in the mundane has garnered him a devoted readership and inspired aspiring poets worldwide. Charles Simic's poetic legacy lies in his ability to transport readers to otherworldly realms while grounding them in the familiar, inviting contemplation and reflection on the wonders and complexities of existence.
Charles Simic Quotes
Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.
The highest levels of consciousness are wordless.
He who cannot howl will not find his pack.
The world is beautiful but not sayable. That's why we need art.
The secret wish of poetry is to stop time.
Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.
When people ask me how to find happiness in life I tell them, First learn how to cook.
The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then-poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.
If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.
Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.
One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.
A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.
We name one thing and then another. That’s how time enters poetry. Space, on the other hand, comes into being through the attention we pay to each word. The more intense our attention, the more space, and there’s a lot of space inside words.
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
Silence is the only language god speaks.
The religion of the short poem, in every age and in every literature, has a single commandment: Less is always more. The short poem rejects preamble and summary. It's about all and everything, the metaphysics of a few words surrounded by much silence. …The short poem is a match flaring up in a dark universe.
For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.
Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives.
Making art in America is about saving one's soul.
I'm not a stickler for truth. To me, lying in poetry is much more fun. I'm against lying in life, in principle, in any other activity except poetry.
I do believe that a poem needs to remind the reader of his or her own humanity, of what they are, of what they're capable of. Awaken them, in a sense, to the fact that there's a world in front of their eyes, that they have a body, they're going to die, the sky is beautiful, it's fun to be in a grassy field when the sun is shining—those kinds of things.
Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.
Poetry is an orphan of silence.
Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects, such as Duchamp's "Fountain"-urinal as sculpture) abolish the separation between art and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen.
If the sky falls they shall have clouds for supper.
The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.
Here is something we can all count on. Sooner or later our tribe always comes to ask us to agree to murder.
I left parts of myself everywhere, The way absent-minded people leave Gloves and umbrellas Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck
The poem I want to write is impossible. A stone that floats.
Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other.
When you play chess alone it's always your move.
The stars know everything, So we try to read their minds. As distant as they are, We choose to whisper in their presence.
A 'truth' detached and purified of pleasures of ordinary life is not worth a damn in my view. Every grand theory and noble sentiment ought to be first tested in the kitchen-and then in bed, of course.
The stone is a mirror which works poorly. Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dimness, who's to say? In the hush your heart sounds like a black cricket.
There are people who live inside their heads and their intellects. It's something one is born with and stuck with. It's not something you make a decision about.
To submit to chance is to reveal the self and its obsessions.
Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator.
A poem is an instant of lucidity in which the entire organism participates.
In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.
There’s no preparation for poetry.
― Charles Simic Quotes
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Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
