So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality... If poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about self-styled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you - nobody else - who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else... There's the artist's responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth.
e. e. cummings-Before leaving my room i turn, and (stooping through the morning) kiss this pillow, dear where our heads lived and were.
e. e. cummingsGod's terrible face brighter than a spoon collects the image of one fatal word;so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon)resembles something that has not occurred:i am a birdcage without any bird a collar looking for a dog a kisswithout lips;a prayer lacking any kneesbut something beats within my shirt to provehe is undead who living noone is.I have never loved you dear as now i love.
e. e. cummingsHumanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it's there and sitting down on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity i hate you
e. e. cummingsWhen god decided to invent everything he took one reath bigger than a circustent and everything began
e. e. cummingsin a middle of a room stands a suicide sniffing a Paper rose smiling to a self "somewhere it is Spring and sometimes people are in real:imagine somewhere real flowers,but I can't imagine real flowers for if I could,they would somehow not Be real" (so he smiles smiling)"but I will not everywhere be real to you in a moment" The is blond with small hands "& everything is easier than I had guessed everything would be;even remembering the way who looked at whom first,anyhow dancing
e. e. cummingslove is thicker than forget more thinner than recall more seldom than a wave is wet more frequent than to fail it is most mad and moonly and less it shall unbe than all the sea which only is deeper than the sea love is less always than to win less never than alive less bigger than the least begin less littler than forgive it is most sane and sunly and more it cannot die than all the sky which only is higher than the sky
e. e. cummingsHere's to opening and upward... and to yourself and up with you and up with and up with laughing.
e. e. cummingsThe theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion
e. e. cummingsThe Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.
e. e. cummingsMy advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world - unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
e. e. cummingsMeanwhile myself et cetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera.)
e. e. cummingsO sweet spontaneous earth how often has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty thou answereth them only with spring.
e. e. cummingstime is a tree (this life one leaf) but love is the sky and i am for you just so long and long enough
e. e. cummingsnothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands -excerpt of #35 from "100 Selected Poems
e. e. cummingsThe hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.
e. e. cummingsMay my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if its sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young
e. e. cummingsmr youse needn't be so spry concernin questions arty each has his tastes but as for i i likes a certain party gimme the he-man's solid bliss for youse ideas i'll match youse a pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues
e. e. cummingsThe three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well, the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying 'anywhere but here'.
e. e. cummingsSomeone asked me what home was and all I could think of were the stars on the tip of your tongue, the flowers sprouting from your mouth, the roots entwined in the gaps between your fingers, the ocean echoing inside of your ribcage.
e. e. cummingsHumanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.
e. e. cummingsYour slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have closed myself as fingers, you open petal by petal myself a Spring opens her first rose.
e. e. cummings