On Writing and On Being A Poet

"To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." - David McCullough

"Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards."- Henry Miller on writing.

"It will come if it is there, and if you will let it come.” - Gertrude Stein

"If I had to give a young writer some advice I would say to write about something that has happened to him; it’s always easy to tell whether a writer is writing about something that has happened to him or something he has read or been told. It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination."  -  Gabriel García Márquez

"Ars Poetica" is Archibald MacLeish's 1926 poem that references Horace's treatise by that name (translated as "Art of Poetry"), which was written in the first century A.D. Horace's intent was to write a how-to on writing poetry. MacLeish's poem begins:

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.