Philip Levine

“A poem is a serious joke.”

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.”

“Out of the junk and dust of my life, I have managed to cobble together a few poems.”

“A writer's job is to tell the truth.”

“I believe if you can show me a poem that's strong and honest and has a feeling of being alive, I can show you a poem that will not be forgotten.”

“I'm a believer in the power of knowledge and the ferocity of beauty, so from my point of view, your life is never wasted.”

“We are the people we have been waiting for, and we have been waiting for a long time.”

“What work is, is still the central question of my life.”

“The poem is the result of a poet's emotions and thoughts, which are often contradictory and always changing.”

“You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and events and places.”

“What is it to be a poet? It is to see, to hear, to feel, to think, in a way that is different from other people.”

“All my life, I've been trying to make a poem that is so transparent you can't see the poet in it.”