Louis Simpson Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

For people may not know what they think
about politics in the Balkans,
or the vexed question of men and women,
but everyone has a definite opinion
about the flavour of shredded coconut.

Louis Simpson
The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it.

Louis Simpson
All that grave weight of America
Cancelled! Like Greece and Rome.
The future in ruins!

Louis Simpson
When I was in hospital I found I could hardly read or writ. In these circumstances I began to write poems. I found that poetry was the only kind of writing in which I could express my thoughts. One night I dreamed I was lying on the bank of a canal, under machine gun fire. The next morning I wrote it out, Carentan O Caretan, and as I wrote I realized it was not a dream, but the memory of my first time under fire.

Louis Simpson
I did not wish to protest against war. My object was to remember. I wanted people to find in my poems the truth of what it had been like to be an American infantry soldier. Now I see I was writing a memorial of those years, for the me I had known, who were silent.

Louis Simpson
Where is the Mississippi panorama
And the girl who played the piano?
Where are you, Walt?
The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.

Louis Simpson
It's complicated, being an American,
Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time.
Perhaps, after all, this is not the right subject for a poem.

Louis Simpson
In my grandmother's house there was always chicken soup
And talk of the old country--mud and boards,
Poverty,
The snow falling down and necks of lovers.

Louis Simpson
I gave no prescriptions,
And those who have taken my moods for prophecies
Mistake the matter.

Louis Simpson
The treasures of Cathay were never found.
In this America, this wilderness
Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound,
The generations labor to possess
And grave by grave we civilize the ground.

Louis Simpson