It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.
Randall JarrellA correct answer is like an affectionate kiss, Goethe said; a correct answer, Gertrude would have said, is like a slap in the face.
Randall JarrellIf we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.
Randall JarrellOne of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
Randall JarrellA poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
Randall JarrellI think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
Randall JarrellThe dark, uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.
Randall JarrellI see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness - that darkness flung me - Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.
Randall JarrellMore and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone.
Randall JarrellThe people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.
Randall JarrellThe safest way to avoid the world is through art; and the safest way to be linked to the world is through art.
Randall JarrellIt is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.
Randall JarrellI decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose.
Randall Jarrell