Charles Simić Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Charles Simić
Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.

Charles Simić
The stars know everything, So we try to read their minds. As distant as they are, We choose to whisper in their presence.

Charles Simić
Only brooms
Know the devil
Still exists,

That the snow grows whiter
After a crow has flown over it

Charles Simić
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

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

Charles Simić
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.

Charles Simić
The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.

Charles Simić
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.

Charles Simić
I write because I want every woman in the world to fall in love with me.

Charles Simić
One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

Charles Simić
Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator.

Charles Simić
For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.

Charles Simić
Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal.... The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country.

Charles Simić
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

Charles Simić
If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.

Charles Simić
Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.

Charles Simić
Should some senator or congressman have a sudden attack of conscience and blurt something out, dark money brings them to their senses and reminds them that their job is to facilitate the transfer of public funds into the pockets of the few and to not ask too many questions.

Charles Simić
A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.

Charles Simić
I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!

Charles Simić
Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other.

Charles Simić
It's never been such a good time to be a crook. In what other country of laws does one enjoy so much freedom to defraud one's government and fellow citizens without having to worry about cops showing at the door? Small-time crooks sooner or later end up in the slammer, but our big-time con artists, as we've come to learn, are now regarded as the untouchables, too well-heeled and powerful to lock up.

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

Charles Simić
Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.

Charles Simić
Everything is arbitrary except metaphor, which detects the essential kinship of all things.

Charles Simić