Charles Simic Quotations

A poem is an instant of lucidity in which the entire organism participates.

Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives.

To submit to chance is to reveal the self and its obsessions.

The poem I want to write is impossible. A stone that floats.

There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile To be healed. There's a woden block where bones are broken, Scraped clean--a river dried to its bed

When you play chess alone it's always your move.

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 left parts of myself everywhere, The way absent-minded people leave Gloves and umbrellas Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck

Here in the United States, we speak with reverence of authentic experience. We write poems about our daddies taking us fishing and breaking our hearts by making us throw the little fish back into the river. We even tell the reader the kind of car we were driving, the year and the model, to give the impression that it’s all true. It’s because we think of ourselves as journalists of a kind. Like them, we’ll go anywhere for a story. Don’t believe a word of it. As any poet can tell you, one often sees better with eyes closed than with eyes wide open.

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.