"What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it."

Marianne Moore Literature See all quotes by Marianne Moore →

React to this quote

More by Marianne Moore

“Music should be directed by the ear, poetry by the imagination”

“I have been influenced by the Bible, Bach's music and contemporarily by Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams and Hopkins.”

“Poetry is: a classifying, a botanizing, a voracity of contemplation, a pleasure, an indulgence, an infatuation in which the actual is a deft benficence.”

“I don't consider In Distrust of Merits a poem. It's just a burst of feelings. It's emotion recorded, a 'haphazard form ' a protest.”

“Modern American Poetry: Marianne Moore”

“For me, a poem starts when a felicitious phrase springs to mind.”

Resonant Thoughts

"If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation…"

— Stephen Hawking

Science1942–2018

#science

"After expending the greatest effort, and suffering the greatest sacrifices in blood in all history, we must not compromise the results of our victory...if the League of Nations cannot buttress its ord…"

— Georges Clemenceau

Politics1841–1929

#writing

"There was a certain comfort in returning to West Point after a month at home- not because I was back among those who universally supported the war, but quite tge opposite: I was back among those who b…"

— Martin Dempsey

Military1904

#knowledge

"You have to remember we brought back a picture of the Earth as it is 240,000 miles away. And the fact is, it gives you a different perspective of the Earth when you see it as three-dimensional between…"

— Jim Lovell

Technology1928–2025

#life