Quotes by E. E. Cummings

“You are my sun,my moon,and all my stars.”

“From this hour I ordain myself loosd of limits and imaginary lines.”

“Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,Ancient footprints are everywhere.You can almost think that you’re seein’ doubleOn a cold dark night on the Spanish stairs...”

“If someone someday in this countryDecides to raise a memorial to me,I give my consent to this festivityBut only on this condition - do not build itBy the sea where I was born,I have severed my last ties with the sea...”

“Now there is time and time is young.O, in this single hour I liveAll of myself and do not move.I, the pursued, who madly ran,Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!”

“for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / its always ourselves we find in the sea”

“Be of love (a little) more careful than of anything.”

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”

“Humanity I love you because when youre hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink”

“I imagine that yes is the only living thing.”

“I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”

“Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.”

“Why do you paint?For exactly the same reason I breathe.That’s not an answer.There isn’t any answer.How long hasn’t there been any answer?As long as I can remember.And how long have you written?As long as I can remember.I mean poetry.So do I.”

“Art is a mystery.A mystery is something immeasurable.In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art; nothing which cannot be art is true: and everything untrue doesn’t matter a very good God damn...”

“Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy.Easy?Of course—you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands.I never met him.Who?Everybody.Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting?I am.Pardon me?I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational.Not all painting.No: housepainting is representational.And what does a housepainter represent?Ten dollars an hour.In other words, you don’t want to be serious—It takes two to be serious.”

“I dont know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all the roses.”

“To laugh often and much;to win the respect of intelligent peopleand the affection of children;to earn the appreciation of honest criticsand endure the betrayal of false friends;to appreciate beauty;to find the best in others;to leave the world a bit better,whether by a healthy child,a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;to know even one life has breathed easierbecause you have lived.This is to have succeeded.”

“Unbeing dead isnt being alive.”