Quotes By James Broughton

The only limits are, as always, those of vision.

I like things which appear fragile but are tough inside.

Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be.

The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy.

I'm happy to report that my inner child is still ageless.

And to Shakespeare I owe my vision of the world as a theater, wherein all humans are acting out their parts.

Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite.

For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.

Acclaim is a distraction.

My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.

I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made.

I never wanted to dilute my private passion for the art by airing and arguing it in public.

I had a toy theater and a magic lantern, and when I was eight I built a stage for theatricals in the attic.

Everything that ever happened is still happening. Past, present and future keep happening in the eternity which is Here and Now.

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.

The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.

Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.

My earliest poems sing of the absolute necessity of allowing love to invade and pervade one's life. That can make the miracle happen in reality. Try it.

Consciousness is the glory of creation.

Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.

My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.

If bitterness wants to get into the act, I offer it a cookie or a gumdrop.

True delicacy is not a fragile thing.

Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.

Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open.

Dance, vaudeville, drama, movies - as a child I loved everything that went on in a theater.

A born poet knows in his cradle that a poetic life is the only life worth living.

Adversity is a stimulus.

The American public does not know poets exist.