Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren Quotes
69 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
If, in the middle of World War II, a general could be writing a poem, then maybe I was not so irrelevant after all. Maybe the general was doing more for victory by writing a poem than he would be by commanding an army. At least, he might be doing less harm. By applying the same logic to my own condition, I decided that I might be relevant in what I called a negative way. I have clung to this concept ever since — negative relevance. In moments of vain-glory I even entertain the possibility that if my concept were more widely accepted, the world might be a better place to live in. There are a lot of people who would make better citizens if they were content to be just negatively relevant.
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
For fire flames but in the heart of a colder fire.
All voice is but echo caught from a sound-less voice.
Height is not deprivation of valley, nor defect of desire.
But defines, for the fortunate, that joy in
which all joys should rejoice.
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
But to poetry — You have to be willing to waste time. When you start a poem, stay with it and suffer through it and just think about nothing, not even the poem. Just be there. It's more of a prayerful state than writing the novels is. A lot of the novel is in doing good works, as it were, not praying. And the prayerful state is just being passive with it, mumbling, being around there, lying on the grass, going swimming, you see. Even getting drunk. Get drunk prayerfully, though.
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
What is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding? It is the deepest part of autobiography.
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, the day we went up.
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel... not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?"
Robert Penn Warren
Source
Report...
If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.
Robert Penn Warren
1
2
3
Quote of the day
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx
Robert Penn Warren
Creative Commons
Born:
April 24, 1905
Died:
September 15, 1989
(aged 84)
Bio:
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Known for:
All the King's Men (1946)
Night Rider (1939)
Understanding Poetry (1938)
Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965)
World enough and time (1950)
Most used words:
poem
life
man
bad
time
history
heart
live
future
people
story
fable
light
writing
job
Robert Penn Warren on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Robert Penn Warren Quotes
Robert Penn Warren Short Quotes
American Novelist Quotes
Novelist Quotes
20th-century Novelist Quotes
Related Authors
John Crowe Ransom
American Poet
Allen Tate
American Essayist
Huey Long
American Politician
Cleanth Brooks
American Academic
Family
Eleanor Clark
Spouse
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes