John Berryman Quotes

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

We must travel in the direction of our fear.

Two daiquiris withdrew into a corner of a gorgeous room and one told the other a lie.

Praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.

I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.

That is our ‘pointed task. Love & die.

Ever to confess you're bored means you have no Inner Resources.

But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.

I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature.

This world is gradually becoming a place Where I do not care to be any more.

Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.

We are using our own skins for wallpaper and we cannot win.

These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. They are only meant to terrify & comfort.

Them lady poets must not marry, pal.

I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.

I can offer you only: this world like a knife

One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.

An anaesthetic is a poet-killer.

something has been said for sobriety but very little.

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn

Literature bores me, especially great literature

We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.

Offering Dragons quarter is no good, they regrow all their parts and come on again. They have to be killed.

Wishin' was dyin' but I gotta make it all this way to that bed on these feet.

I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will depend on my being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short of senile dementia.

I cry. Evil dissolves, & love, like foam; that love. Prattle of children powers me home, my heart claps like the swan's under a frenzy of who love me & who shine.

I ask for a decreedooming my bitter enemies to laughteradvanced against them.

Is stuffed, de world, wif feeding girls.

Them lady poets must not marry, pal . . . It is a true error to marry with poets / or to be by them.

These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.They are only meant to terrify & comfort.