Robert Lowell Quotes about Writing

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

Robert Lowell

Writing, Mean, Purpose

Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell (2008). “Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell”

History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had - it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes.

Robert Lowell

Writing, Dull, Dies

Robert Lowell (2017). “New Selected Poems”, p.145, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching.

Robert Lowell

Teaching, Inspiration, Writing

Robert Lowell, Jeffrey Meyers (1988). “Robert Lowell, Interviews and Memoirs”, p.49, University of Michigan Press