Eileen Myles Quotes

Time passes. That's for sure.

Listen, I have been educated. I have learned about Western Civilization. Do you know What the message of Western Civilization is? I am alone.

Part of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.

Poetry is my politics. It's an opportunity that gives me a way to speak.

The poet is like the wise fool or like a version of the stand-up, because we're standing, we're doing stand-up. That's exactly what we're doing.

Urban nature is like living with mass conditions. It sometimes feels like a myth & you are its scribe.

I always think of childhood as the inarticulate moment, and you have your little camera. You were filming it, recording it, you just didn't know how to speak it.

I'm a poet born in the era of Andy Warhol and a generation that wanted to be famous.

Women aren't physically afraid of men; women are genetically afraid of men. It's happened for such a long time.

People loved to talk about how Frank O'Hara didn't really care about getting published. That doesn't jibe with my experience.

I really just love reading. It's my favorite thing, performing my poems live.

People love discovering you. The thing about not being historically a mainstream writer is that everyone feels like you're theirs, you're their friend.

Art feels like it has this frame, and it's either outside or inside.

Poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling.

Poetry from the bottom up is an act of selection: you kind of feel your way through the crowds of poems. The good ones came forward a long time ago, and the bad ones fell away.

In Arlington, people would laugh at you if you tried to get people to look at your drawings or listen to your poetry. It was like you thought you were special.

I wasn't afraid of being poor. I didn't want to live in a big house. I'm the perfect size for poetry. I can move around.

As things get worse, poetry gets better because it becomes more necessary.

Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy.

If the poetry world celebrate its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence, poetry would wind up being a largely female world, and the men would leave.

When somebody's in love with you, they think it's amazing you've written them a poem, and when they don't love you anymore, they hate those poems. They wish those poems would go away.

Who doesn't want to be famous? I am famous. I'm dying to be on TV.

Sometimes in utter hopelessness I put my cheek on the table like it was someone. I wanted to wake my brain up and be loved.