Louise Gluck Quotes & Sayings

“I preferred the simplest vocabulary.”

“It seems to me in the past it's been a good thing, as a writer, to have experiences I hadn't expected.”

“What I responded to, on the page, was the way a poem could liberate, by means of a word's setting, through subtleties of timing, of pacing, that word's full and surprising range of meaning. It seemed to me that simple language best suited this enterprise.”

“I don't live with earplugs. I don't like the spotlight - but I like overhearing conversations.”

“I have no concern with widening audience.”

“Toward his critics, the artist harbors a defensive ace: knowledge that the future will erase the present.”

“We have a disturbing cultural appetite for novelty, and it seems to me wrong each new laureate should dislodge the ideas of his or her predecessor, especially when they're still unfolding.”