One is least sure of one's self, sometimes, when one is most positive. Conrad Aiken More Quotes by Conrad Aiken More Quotes From Conrad Aiken It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I! Conrad Aiken always-tryingwritingmemories I ascend from darkness Conrad Aiken keysmorningwind Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam ... and after a while they will fall to dust and rain; or else we will tear them down with impatient hands; and hew rock out of the earth, and build them again. Conrad Aiken dustrainfall We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain. We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, but we know that we rose and walked, that after a while we shall lie down again. Conrad Aiken painrootslying One cricket said to another - Conrad Aiken ridiculoushatelove I love you, what star do you live on? Conrad Aiken i-love-youstarslove-you Poetry will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. Conrad Aiken glorifydoneknows I always hankered to be a composer - I was mad about music, though I never studied seriously, and can't read a note. But I learned to play the piano and became pretty skillful at improvisation, especially after a drop or two. Conrad Aiken pianoplaytwo Time in the heart and sequence in the brain-- Conrad Aiken brainhearttime I think there's an enormous lot of talent around, and somewhere amongst these I'm sure that something will emerge, given time. Conrad Aiken talentgiventhinking How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead, Conrad Aiken magnificencedustmen I think we've come to a kind of splinter period in poetry. These tiny little bright fragments of observation - and not produced under sufficient pressure - some of it's very skillful, but I don't think there's anywhere a discernible major poet in the process of emerging; or if he is, I ain't seen him. Conrad Aiken splinterslittlesthinking Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust, Conrad Aiken dustdeathlying I'm not in the least Southern; I'm entirely New England. Conrad Aiken new-englandenglandsouthern I began by doing book reviews on the typewriter and then went over to short stories on the machine, meanwhile sticking to pencil for poetry. Conrad Aiken machinestypewritersbook I think it's very useful to be insulated from your surrounds, because it gives you your inviolate privacy, without pressures, so that you can just be yourself. Conrad Aiken being-yourselfgivingthinking I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It's simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe. Conrad Aiken spiritualdiscoverybelieve I really don't know enough about the structure of fiction. Conrad Aiken structureenoughfiction The wind shrieks, the wind grieves; It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again; And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain. Conrad Aiken wallpaindream The days, the nights, flow one by one above us. The hours go silently over our lifted faces. We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea. Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together. We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee. Conrad Aiken wallsleepnight
