Randall Jarrell Quotes

Quotes about:

• A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

  Randall Jarrell

  Men, Poetry, Lightning

  1953 Poetry and the Age,'The Obscurity of the Poet'.

  45 Copy quote

• The ways we miss our lives are life.

  Randall Jarrell

  Missing, Way, Our Lives

  Randall Jarrell, Mary Jarrell (1985). “Randall Jarrell's letters: an autobiographical and literary selection”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  10 Copy quote

• One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

  Randall Jarrell

  Wisdom, Children, Facts

  Third book of Criticism

  15 Copy quote

• most of the people in a war never fight for even a minute though they bear for years and die forever. They do not fight, but only starve, only suffer, only die: the sum of all this passive misery is that great activity, War.

  Randall Jarrell

  War, Fighting, Years

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Poetry in War and Peace" (p. 129), 1980.

  11 Copy quote

• Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

  Randall Jarrell

  Hurt, Pain, Darkness

  Randall Jarrell, Mary Jarrell (1985). “Randall Jarrell's letters: an autobiographical and literary selection”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  6 Copy quote

• Most poets, most good poets even, no longer have the heart to write about what is most terrible in the world of the present: the bombs waiting beside the rockets, the hundreds of millions staring into the temporary shelter of their television sets, the decline of the West that seems less a decline than the fall preceding an explosion.

  Randall Jarrell

  Fall, Writing, Heart

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Fifty Years of American Poetry", pp. 332 - 333, 1969.

  5 Copy quote

• The dark, uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.

  Randall Jarrell

  Dark, World, Succeed

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• Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence.

  Randall Jarrell

  Animal, Form, Human Life

  "Poetry and the Age" by Randall Jarrell, Vintage paperback, (p. 22), 1955.

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• We can't tell our life from our wish

  Randall Jarrell

  Wish, Our Lives

  Randall Jarrell, “A Man Meets A Woman In The Street”

  6 Copy quote

• Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed to think twice about anything. His works are the mad scene from Giselle , on ice skates: he weeps, pulls out his hair holding his wrists like Lifar and tells you what Life is, all at a gliding forty miles an hour.

  Randall Jarrell

  Art, Thinking, Hair

  "The Lost World". Book by Randall Jarrell, p. 159, 1965.

  6 Copy quote

• Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself.

  Randall Jarrell

  Art, Ornaments, Occupation

  "No Other Book: Selected Essays" by Randall Jarrell, edited by Brad Leithauser, (p. 15), 1999.

  4 Copy quote

• Christina Stead has a Chinese say, "Our old age is perhaps life's decision about us" or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.

  Randall Jarrell

  Decision, Chinese, Age

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "An Unread Book", p. 42, 1969.

  4 Copy quote

• when General Eisenhower defined an intellectual as "a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows", he was speaking not as a Republican but as an American.

  Randall Jarrell

  Men, Intellectual, Republican

  Randall Jarrell (1965). “A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables”

  1 Copy quote

• I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness - that darkness flung me - Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

  Randall Jarrell

  Wisdom, Pain, Ignorance

  Randall Jarrell, Mary Jarrell (1985). “Randall Jarrell's letters: an autobiographical and literary selection”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  5 Copy quote

• The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.

  Randall Jarrell

  Birthday, Yellow, People

  Randall Jarrell (1965). “A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables”

  9 Copy quote

• The climate of our culture is changing. Under these new rains, new suns, small things grow great, and what was great grows small; whole species disappear and are replaced.

  Randall Jarrell

  Rain, Culture, Sun

  Randall Jarrell (1965). “A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables”

  1 Copy quote

• If you've been put in your place long enough you begin to act like the place.

  Randall Jarrell

  Equality, Long, Enough

  4 Copy quote

• The Southern past, the Southern present, the Southern future, concentrated into Gertrude's voice, became one of red clay pine-barrens, of chain-gang camps, of housewives dressed in flour sacks who stare all day dully down into dirty sinks.

  Randall Jarrell

  Dirty, Past, Voice

  Randall Jarrell (2010). “Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy”, p.66, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

• The safest way to avoid the world is through art; and the safest way to be linked to the world is through art.

  Randall Jarrell

  Art, World, Way

  2 Copy quote

• Read at whim! Read at whim!

  Randall Jarrell

  Happiness, Whim

  "A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables" by Randall Jarrell, (pp. 112-113), 1962.

  7 Copy quote

• If you never look just wrong to your contemporaries you will never look just right to posterity - every writer has to try to be, to some extent, sometimes, a law unto himself.

  Randall Jarrell

  Law, Trying, Looks

  "Poetry and the Age" by Randall Jarrell, Vintage paperback, (p. 230), 1955.

  1 Copy quote

• It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

  Randall Jarrell

  Believe, Poetry, Poet

  Randall Jarrell, Mary Jarrell (1985). “Randall Jarrell's letters: an autobiographical and literary selection”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  10 Copy quote

• I think Miss Moore was right to cut "The Steeple-Jack" - the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but she has cut too much... The reader may feel like saying, "Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it's hers, isn't it?" No; it's much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody's, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David's left leg.

  Randall Jarrell

  Cutting, Thinking, Long Ago

  "Poetry and the Age". Book by Randall Jarrell. Chapter: "Her Shield", p. 177, 1953.

  4 Copy quote

• The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.

  Randall Jarrell

  Crafts, Narrative, Length

  "The Rumpus mini-interview project #102: Max Winter". Interview with Maria Anderson, therumpus.net. September 21, 2017.

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• You give me the feeling that the universe Was made by something more than human For something less than human. But I identify myself, as always, With something that there's something wrong with, With something human.

  Randall Jarrell

  Giving, Feelings, Made

  Randall Jarrell (1966). “The Lost World”, London : Eyre & Spottiswoode

  1 Copy quote

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