Guy Davenport Quotes

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.

Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.

Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it.

We will always return to the private and inviolable act of reading as our culture's way of developing an individual.

I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet.

In curved Einsteinian space we are at all times, technically, looking at the back of our own head.

A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible.

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its makers attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

I never intended to be a teacher. I just like going to school and learning things.

nothing now exists that is so valuable as whatever theoretically might replace it.

Originality houses many rooms, and the views from the windows are all different.

Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.

Theres nothing like being a soldier for confidence or learning your limits or enduring utter humiliation.

The birds suffer their suffering each in a lifetime, forgetting it as they go.

There's nothing like being a soldier for confidence or learning your limits or enduring utter humiliation.