John Berryman Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so…
And moreover my mother taught me as a boy
(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

John Berryman

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

John Berryman

I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.

John Berryman

We must travel in the direction of our fear.

John Berryman

There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).

John Berryman

I saw in my dream
the great lost cities, Machu Picchu, Cambridge Mass., Angkor.

John Berryman

Decent fall the cloths over a high income.

John Berryman

Huffy Henry hid the day,
Unappeasable Henry sulked.

John Berryman

I always wanted to be old, I wanted to say "O I haven't read that for fifteen years."

John Berryman

Mountainous, woman not breaks and will bend: sways God nearby: anguish comes to an end. Blossomed Sarah, and I blossom. Is that thing alive? I hear a famisht howl.

John Berryman

Collating bones: I would have liked to do. Henry would have been hot at that. I missed his profession. As a little boy I always thought "I'm an archaeologist"; who Could be more respected peaceful serious than that?

John Berryman

He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back. He thought they were old friends.

John Berryman

The world is gradually becoming a place where I do not care to be any more.

John Berryman

Wishin' was dyin' but I gotta make it all this way to that bed on these feet.

John Berryman

These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. They are only meant to terrify & comfort.

John Berryman

Offering dragons quarter is no good, they regrow all their parts & come on again, they have to be killed.

John Berryman

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.

John Berryman

Perhaps God resembles one of the last etchings of Goya & not Velasquez, never Rembrandt no.

John Berryman

Two daiquiris
withdrew into a corner of the gorgeous room and one told the other a lie.

John Berryman

Writing is just a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to make it come out right.

John Berryman

I myself walked at the funeral of tenderness.

John Berryman

I haven't lost a battle yet but I am tense for the first losing.

John Berryman

I seldom go to films. They are too exciting,
said the Honourable Possum.

John Berryman

What was it missing, then, at the man's heart so that he does not wound?

John Berryman

I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

John Berryman

John Berryman

Born: October 25, 1914

Died: January 7, 1972 (aged 57)

Bio: John Allyn McAlpin Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry.

Known for:

The Dream Songs (1969)
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956)
The freedom of the poet
Berryman's Sonnets (1967)
Collected Poems, 1937-71

Most used words:

ordeal, henry, lost, ruin, missing

John Berryman on Wikipedia

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