it is as unseeing to ask what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.
Edith SitwellMy temper is not spoilt. I am absolutely non-homicidal. Nor do I ever attack unless I have been attacked first, and then Heaven have mercy upon the attacker, because I don't! I just sharpen my wits on a wooden head as a cat sharpens its claws on the wood legs of a table.
Edith SitwellHot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.
Edith SitwellVirginia Woolf's writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere.
Edith SitwellIsn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.
Edith Sitwell