#v

I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it. ↗

— Rita Dove

#believe #creativity #going #i #i believe

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person. ↗

— Rita Dove

#away #book #dream #far #far away

So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love - loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#beauty

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive. ↗

— Rita Dove

#alive #come #extremely #had #i

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things. ↗

— Rita Dove

#enjoy #i #i love #lots #love

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends. ↗

— Rita Dove

#could #ends #exciting #exciting thing #father

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. ↗

— Henry Van Dyke

#birds #except #possess #sang #silent

To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you. ↗

— Rita Dove

#anything #because #dealing #else #going

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature. ↗

— Rita Dove

#adversity #almost #begin #being #convey

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. ↗

— Maureen Dowd

#even #get #less #minute #settle