We had made the mistake for years of allowing Democrats to build up a set of strongholds in the major metro areas that they were then able to work from, so it's incumbent on us to recover those gains and attack them right in the base of those strongholds.

James Dickey

Categorized in : Politics

What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe

James Dickey

love-poetry realizing writing

There are so many selves in everybody, and just to explore and exploit one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative person.

James Dickey

creative persons self

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

James Dickey

lightning poetry rain

Find out what you do best, and then don't do it.

James Dickey

Poetry makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world.

James Dickey

possession kind world

So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.

James Dickey

modern destruction war

Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.

James Dickey

pilots flying men

I don’t believe that a reviewer or a critic can really criticize well unless he can praise well.

James Dickey

criticize praise believe

Then you develop a kind of critical sense about what you write. You can tell when something is good, but it would be just as good in somebody else's work too. You want to hold out for those things only you can say.

James Dickey

beautiful inspirational life

I once had the nerve to ask Picasso the question, 'What is art?' He answered, 'Art is a lie which makes us see the truth.

James Dickey

nerves lying art

To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

James Dickey

reckless precise

What a view, i said again. The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.

James Dickey

moon views rivers

It takes an awful lot of time for me to write anything. I have endless drafts, one after another; and I try out 50, 75, or a hundred variations on a single line sometimes. I work on the process of refining low-grade ore. I get maybe a couple of nu ggets of gold out of 50 tons of dirt. It is tough for me. No, I am not inspired.

James Dickey

couple writing trying

The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.

James Dickey

mixtures unique literature

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

James Dickey

wells dresses writing

To have guilt you've got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don't feel the guilt you ought to have. And that's what The Firebombing is about.

James Dickey

guilt feels sometimes

To live a very long time... is supposed to be the desired object of all human life. But it is not. The main thing is to ride the flood tide... How glorious it is to create! For those few moments of a lifetime when the stream is running full and deep: those are the justification for everything.

James Dickey

running life long

What I want is to be willing to fail rather than stagnate.

James Dickey

willing failing want

I feel very happy to see the sun come up every day. I feel happy to be around. ... I like to take this day- any day-and go to town with it.

James Dickey

come-up towns sun

If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular piece of mine,

James Dickey

toilets frost pieces