Robert Penn Warren - Time Quotes

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So little time we live in Time,
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour's term
To practice for Eternity.

Robert Penn Warren
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
They were human, they suffered, wore long black coat and gold watch chain.
They stare from daguerrotype with severe reprehension,
Or from genuine oil, and you'd never guess any pain
In those merciless eyes that now remark our own time's sad declension.

Robert Penn Warren
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.

Robert Penn Warren
You can't make bricks without straw, and most of the time all the straw you got is secondhand from the cowpen.

Robert Penn Warren
Go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.

Robert Penn Warren
If anybody's going to be a writer, he's got to be able to say, "This has got to come first, to write has to come first." That is, if you have a job, you have to scant your job a little bit. You can't be an industrious apprentice if you're going to be a poet. You've got to pretend to be an industrious apprentice but really steal time from the boss. Or from your wife, or somebody, you see. The time's got to come from somewhere. And also this passivity, this "waitingness," has to be achieved some way. It can't be treated as a job. It's got to be treated as a non-job or an anti-job.

Robert Penn Warren
I reckon I am a smart aleck, but it is just a way to pass the time.

Robert Penn Warren
And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.

Robert Penn Warren