Thom Gunn Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• When I first started teaching at Berkeley in 1958, I could not announce that I was gay to anybody, though probably quite a few of my fellow teachers knew.

  Thom Gunn

  Teacher, Teaching, Pride

  7 Copy quote

• Ginsberg's Collected Poems contains a wonderful poem about making it with Neal Cassady.

  Thom Gunn

  Wonderful, Ginsberg

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• I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other.

  Thom Gunn

  Writing, Thinking, Class

  7 Copy quote

• I don't think of sex as a self-destructive impulse.

  Thom Gunn

  Sex, Thinking, Self

  4 Copy quote

• I haven't written anything in four years. I'm sort of dried up.

  Thom Gunn

  Years, Four, Havens

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• I notice that students, particularly for gay students, it's too easy to write about my last trick or something. It's not very interesting to the reader.

  Thom Gunn

  Writing, Gay, Interesting

  7 Copy quote

• Many of my poems are not sexual.

  Thom Gunn

  4 Copy quote

• It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!

  Thom Gunn

  Teacher, Gay, Proud

  7 Copy quote

• I was much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre.

  Thom Gunn

  Paul Sartre

  52 Copy quote

• I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

  Thom Gunn

  Reading, San Francisco, Bishops

  24 Copy quote

• I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

  Thom Gunn

  Book, Reading, Bisexual

  Thom Gunn (2017). “Selected Poems of Thom Gunn”, p.177, Faber & Faber

  12 Copy quote

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