Top 138 Quotes & Sayings by Dylan Thomas
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.
Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.
There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.
Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.
Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.
Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.
No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud through his pioneering work into the Unconscious and by the influence of those discoveries on the scientific, philosophic, and artistic work of his contemporaries: but not, by any means, necessarily through Freud's own writing.
The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.
I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.
As I read more and more - and it was not all verse, by any means - my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.
My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.
Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction.
I've just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record.
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity.
The function of posterity is to look after itself.
The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.
Every device there is in language is there to be used, if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twistings and convolutions of words, the inventions and contrivances, are all part of the joy that is part of the painful, voluntary work.
Though lovers be lost, love shall not.
He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.
Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.
Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.
Come on up, boys -I'm dead.
And now, gentlemen, like your manners, I must leave you.
Cold beer is bottled God.
It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.
To begin at the beginning: It is a spring moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.
I hold a beast, an angel and a madman within me.
If you want a definition of poetry, say: Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing and let it go at that.
Though they go mad they shall be sane, though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.
Especially when the October wind With frosty fingers punishes my hair, Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire And cast a shadow crab upon the land, By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds, Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks, My busy heart who shudders as she talks Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
My tears are like the quiet drift of petals from some magic rose; and all my grief flows from the rift of unremembered skies and snows. I think that if I touched the earth, it would crumble; it is so sad and beautiful, so tremulously like a dream.
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.
I think, that if I touched the earth, It would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, So tremulously like a dream.
I love you more than anybody in the world... I love you for millions and millions of things, clocks and vampires and dirty nails and squiggly paintings and lovely hair and being dizzy and falling dreams.
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies. They are better company and their feelings towards you are always genuine.
Life always offers you a second chance. is called tomorrow.
The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.
You wouldn't think such a place as San Francisco could exist. The wonderful sunlight there, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at your shoes. Beautiful Chinatown. Every race in the world. The sardine fleets sailing out. The little cable-cars whizzing down The City hills. And all the people are open and friendly.
Why do men think you can pick love up and re-light it like a candle? Women know when love is over.
Youth calls to age across the tired years: 'What have you found,' he cries, 'what have you sought?" 'What have you found,' age answers through his tears, 'What have you sought.
I said some words to the close and holy darkness and then I slept.
Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death. Then, when his soul is naked, is he one With the man in the wind, and the west moon, With the harmonious thunder of the sun
I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave.
I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they’ve ever questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn’t know, because I won’t ever dare ask that question.
Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart; Push in their tides.
I love you so much I’ll never be able to tell you; I’m frightened to tell you. I can always feel your heart. Dance tunes are always right: I love you body and soul: —and I suppose body means that I want to touch you and be in bed with you, and i suppose soul means that i can hear you and see you and love you in every single, single thing in the whole world asleep or awake
Love is the last light spoken.
... an ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ... by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was my world.
The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.
Poetry is not the most important thing in life... I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.
Though lovers be lost love shall not.
Do not go gently into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.
My birthday began with the water - Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.
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