Paul Engle Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“I knew about holiness, never having missed a Sunday-school class since I started at four years. But if Jews were also religious, how could our neighbor with the grease-grimy shirt use the word 'damn' about them?”

“The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pacing horses, then coach horses, then work horses, finally saddle horses. I grew up around, on, and under horses, fed them, shoveled their manure, emptied the mangers of corncobs.”

“I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills around Cedar Rapids, repeating the lines over and over until I had them right, making some of the rhythm of the horse help.”

“There must be an alternative between Hollywood and New York, between those two places psychically as well as geographically. The University of Iowa tries to offer such a community, congenial to the young writer, with his uneasiness about writing as an honorable career, or with his excess of ego about calling himself a writer.”

“For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.”

“All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love.”

“Corncobs are the greatest fire-making tinder.”

“Human life is too difficult for people.”

“Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.”

“To eat in the same room where food is cooked - that is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance.”