Stephen Dunn Quotes

And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have.

Although I know it's unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.

There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.

Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers.

I’ll always deny that I kissed her. I was just whispering into her mouth.

Oh abstractions are just abstract until they have an ache in them.

I will try to disappoint you better than anyone ever has.

exaggerated sunsets / splashed with rain, odd collisions / of roots, animals, seeds. / I didn't like a thing I saw, / so much effort to be strange.

I make myself up from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, that’s when I worry.

Isn't there a curious elegance in how one moment passes into another?

I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit.

I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.

All good poems are victories over something.

Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive.

I love what's left after love has been tested.

A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.

A moment of something between acceptance and resignation of one's smallness in the world.

Originality, of course, is what occurs when something new arises out of what's already been done.

When I stop becoming, that's when I worry.

Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.

Everything I can't see / is at least as real as what I can.

I've triedto become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.

Anyone out without the excuse of a dog should be handcuffed and searched for loneliness.

I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.

I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but those words unsaidpoison every next moment.I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.