Latest Conrad Aiken Quotes from Interviews

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• I've tried it long ago, with hashish and peyote. Fascinating, yes, but no good, no. This, as we find in alcohol, is an escape from awareness, a cheat, a momentary substitution, and in the end a destruction of it.

  Conrad Aiken

  Long Ago, Alcohol, Peyote

• I think there's an enormous lot of talent around, and somewhere amongst these I'm sure that something will emerge, given time.

  Conrad Aiken

  Thinking, Talent, Given

• I think that what's happening today, with all the young poets rushing from one college to another, lecturing at the drop of a hat and so on, is not too good; I think it might have a bad effect on a great many of the young poets. They - to quote Mark Twain - "swap juices" a little too much, so that they are in danger of losing their own identity and don't give themselves time enough in which to work out what's really of importance to them - they're too busy.

  Conrad Aiken

  College, Thinking, Rushing

• I think we've come to a kind of splinter period in poetry. These tiny little bright fragments of observation - and not produced under sufficient pressure - some of it's very skillful, but I don't think there's anywhere a discernible major poet in the process of emerging; or if he is, I ain't seen him.

  Conrad Aiken

  Thinking, Splinters, Littles

• I think it's very useful to be insulated from your surrounds, because it gives you your inviolate privacy, without pressures, so that you can just be yourself.

  Conrad Aiken

  Being Yourself, Thinking, Giving

• As poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry's office.

  Conrad Aiken

  Men, Office, Done

  "Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9". Interview with Robert Hunter Wilbur in September 1963, "The Paris Review", www.theparisreview.org. Winter - Spring 1968.

• I really don't know enough about the structure of fiction.

  Conrad Aiken

  Fiction, Enough, Structure

• I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It's simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.

  Conrad Aiken

  Spiritual, Believe, Discovery

  "Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9". Interview with Robert Hunter Wilbur in September 1963, "The Paris Review", www.theparisreview.org. Winter - Spring 1968.

• I always hankered to be a composer - I was mad about music, though I never studied seriously, and can't read a note. But I learned to play the piano and became pretty skillful at improvisation, especially after a drop or two.

  Conrad Aiken

  Play, Two, Piano

• I began by doing book reviews on the typewriter and then went over to short stories on the machine, meanwhile sticking to pencil for poetry.

  Conrad Aiken

  Book, Typewriters, Machines

• I'm afraid I wasn't much of a student, but my casual reading was enormous.

  Conrad Aiken

  Reading, Students, Casual

• I'm not in the least Southern; I'm entirely New England.

  Conrad Aiken

  Southern, England, New England