Louise Gluck quotes

Louise Glück was an American poet recognized for her spare and emotionally resonant verse. Her work often explored themes of family, loss, and the inner life. She received numerous prestigious awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature. Here are 11 of her quotes:

From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.

Louise Gluck

Intense love always leads to mourning.

Louise Gluck

I preferred the simplest vocabulary.

Louise Gluck

It seems to me in the past it's been a good thing, as a writer, to have experiences I hadn't expected.

Louise Gluck

I have no concern with widening audience.

Louise Gluck

We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.

Louise Gluck

The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.

Louise Gluck

Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.

Louise Gluck

What I responded to, on the page, was the way a poem could liberate, by means of a word's setting, through subtleties of timing, of pacing, that word's full and surprising range of meaning. It seemed to me that simple language best suited this enterprise.

Louise Gluck