Theodore Roethke quotes

Theodore Roethke was an influential American poet renowned for his introspective and nature-inspired verse. His work explores themes of childhood, the natural world, and the complexities of the human psyche. He is remembered as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century in the United States. Here are 114 of his quotes:

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. (Theodore Roethke)
Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light. View quote
Theodore Roethke
A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait. View quote
Theodore Roethke
A mind too active is no mind at all. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Over every mountain, there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley. View quote
Theodore Roethke
What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? View quote
Theodore Roethke
Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't. View quote
Theodore Roethke
The darkness has it's own light. View quote
Theodore Roethke
The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow. View quote
Theodore Roethke
You can't make poetry simply by avoiding clichés. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Being, not doing, is my first joy. (Theodore Roethke)
Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit; Too close immediacy an exhaustion. View quote
Theodore Roethke
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow Upon that God who knows what I would know. View quote
Theodore Roethke
I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road, As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland; Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance, By pulling off flesh from the living planet; As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration. View quote
Theodore Roethke
You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Love begets love. This torment is my joy. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Poetry is not a mere shuffling of dead words or even a corralling of live ones. View quote
Theodore Roethke
May my silences become more accurate. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries. View quote
Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see. View quote
Theodore Roethke
I have gone into the waste lonely places Behind the eye. (Theodore Roethke)
The light comes brighter from the east; the caw Of restive crows is sharper on the ear. View quote
Theodore Roethke
In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. View quote
Theodore Roethke
My truths are all foreknown, This anguish self-revealed. I'm naked to the bone, With nakedness my shield. View quote
Theodore Roethke