A Quote by Francois Mauriac

I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.

Francois Mauriac

Quote Topics

Believe Counts First First Of All Great Great Poet I Believe Novelist Only Poet Poetry

Quote Author

Francois Mauriac
French - Novelist
October 11, 1885 - September 1, 1970

There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

Edward Hirsch

I've been wrestling with Kafka since I was an adolescent. I think he's a great aphorist, a great letter writer, a great diarist, a great short story writer, and a great novelist - I'd put novelist last.

John Banville

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

Oscar Wilde

I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.

D. H. Lawrence

Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn't write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began - the first morning - and I've never stopped.

Jane Gardam

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

Edward Hirsch

I have always used a great variety of verse forms, especially in my poetry for children. I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to children.

William Jay Smith

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry ?rst, ?nds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

William Faulkner

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Greil Marcus

Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it's this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.

Amanda Gorman

He was a great poet" They lamented. No, he was not a great poet," said Theo, "He was a good poet, he could have been better. That's the real loss don't you see?

Lloyd Alexander

I believe the Negro blood counts, and counts to my advantage – though it has caused me at times a life of great humiliation and sorrow.

Henry Ossawa Tanner

I believe the Negro blood counts, and counts to my advantage - though it has caused me at times a life of great humiliation and sorrow.

Henry Ossawa Tanner

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

Clive James

Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you.

Edward Hirsch

I have a wonderful editor who believes in fiction and poetry. She herself is a novelist and poet.