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Paul Engle Quotes - Page 2

All Quotes Writing

Human life is too difficult for people.

Human life is too difficult for people.

People, Life Is, Human Life

Paul Engle (1996). “A Lucky American Childhood”, p.160, University of Iowa Press

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Grief, Delight, Pages

Paul Engle (1965). “A Woman Unashamed: And Other Poems”, New York, Random House

There must be an alternative between Hollywood and New York, between those two places psychically as well as geographically. The University of Iowa tries to offer such a community, congenial to the young writer, with his uneasiness about writing as an honorable career, or with his excess of ego about calling himself a writer.

New York, Writing, Iowa

Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But they were sleigh bells, not church bells, for we lived in a part of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where there were no churches.

Children, Church Bells, Iowa

Paul Engle (1960). “Prairie Christmas”

Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a lot of timber, a handsome and imaginative landscape, crowded with constant small changes of scene and full of little creeks winding with pools where shiners, crappies and catfish hover.

Country, Small Changes, Iowa

The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of the horse barn, still writing those doubtful poems where too much emotion clashed with too many words.

Horse, Writing, Years

Paul Engle (1996). “A Lucky American Childhood”, p.154, University of Iowa Press

Writing is like this -- you dredge for the poem's meaning the way police dredge for a body. They think it is down there under the black water, they work the grappling hooks back and forth.

Writing, Thinking, Water

To eat in the same room where food is cooked - that is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance.

Way, Rooms, Abundance

Paul Engle (1996). “A Lucky American Childhood”, p.190, University of Iowa Press

Touch was important. The evening of the Third of July we would go around the neighborhood and look at the fireworks others had bought, taking them out of the brown paper sack and handling them cautiously as if they were precious stones. There was envy when we saw sacks with more in them than we had.

July, Precious Stones, Envy

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