A Quote by Nick Flynn

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness.

Nick Flynn

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Madness Particularly Poets Prone Writers

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Nick Flynn
American - Writer
Born: January 26, 1960

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative people prone to madness? They have more than average amounts of energies and abilities to see things in a fresh and original way—then because they also have depression, I think they’re more in touch with human suffering.

Nick Flynn

For me personally, I love art and artists of all mediums and we've seen madness is more often than not present in the greatest painters, poets, writers, and songwriters in history.

Jeff Feuerzeig

Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?

Susanna Kaysen

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

James Broughton

Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try to find a home in language.

Natasha Trethewey

I don't see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were into triathlons or environmentalism were just as crazy as the poets, just as prone to tears over gardening or air conditioners, just as ready to kite a cheque or binge on cookie dough.

Russell Smith

My generation of writers has been prone to premature illness and death, especially the women. When Black male writers meet it's like a session of the American Diabetic Association.

Ishmael Reed

Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love.

Julian Barnes

Neurotics are anxiety prone, accident prone, and often just prone.

Mignon McLaughlin

The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?

Brion Gysin

I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.

John Legend

The 1960s was a period when writers in the West began to be aware of the extraordinary eloquence and popular attraction of the Russian poets such as Yevtushenko and Voznesensky - oppositional figures who could draw crowds. The Russian poets recited from memory as a matter of course.

James Fenton

Writers, and particularly female writers, have to fight for the conditions they need to work.

Doris Lessing

Anyone who wants to be a writer should, if given the opportunity, hang out with "real writers," that is, poets or writers who are lions in literature, semi-lions, or published authors.

Kirby Wright

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.

Gore Vidal

I tend to like the way poets form communities. Writing can be lonely after all. Modern life can be lonely. Poets do seem to be more social than fiction writers. This could be because of poetry's roots in the oral tradition - poetry is read aloud and even performed. I'm just speculating, of course. At any rate, because poets form these groups, they learn from one another. That is one of the best things about being a poet.

Rae Armantrout

A Quote by Nick Flynn

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