Richard Hugo quotes:

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

A creative writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters.

Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum:one No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly. Make sure each sentence is at least four words longer or shorter than the one before it.

Think small.... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism.

You are someone and you have a right to your life.

I will garden on the double run, my rhythm obvious in the ringing rakes, and trust in fate to keep me poor and kind and work until my heart is short, then go out slowly with a feeble grin, my fingers flexing but my eyes gone gray from cramps and the lack of oxygen.

A good creative-writing teacher can save a good writer a lot of time.

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance.

Don't write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn't be changed.

If you want to communicate, use the telephone

In the world of imagination, all things belong.

Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it, you will.

Rub a half potato on your wart and wrap it in a damp cloth. Close your eyes and whirl three times and throw. Then bury rag and spud exactly where they fall.

Scholars look for final truths they will never find. Creative writers concern themselves with possibilities that are always there to the receptive.

You might come here Sunday on a whim.Say your life broke down. The last good kissyou had was years ago. You walk these streetslaid out by the insane, past hotelsthat didn't last, bars that did, the tortured tryof local drivers to accelerate their lives.Only churches are kept up. The jailturned 70 this year. The only prisoneris always in, not knowing what he's done.

You might come here Sunday on a whim.Say your life broke down. The last good kissyou had was years ago. You walk these streetslaid out by the insane, past hotelsthat didn't last, bars that did, the tortured tryof local drivers to accelerate their lives.Only churches are kept up. The jailturned 70 this year. The only prisoneris always in, not knowing what he's done."

Don't write love poems when you're in love. Write them when you're not in love.

You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything."

Isn't this your life? That ancient kissstill burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeatso accurate, the church bell simply seemsa pure announcement: ring and no one comes?Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesiumand scorn sufficient to support a town,not just Philipsburg, but townsof towering blondes, good jazz and boozethe world will never let you haveuntil the town you came from dies inside?"

I hate that phrase "the real world." Why is an aircraft factory more real than a university? Is it?

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

...an imagined town is at least as real as an actual town. If it isn't, you may be in the wrong business. Our words come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost. It can be hard. It can be worse forty years from now if you feel you could have done it and didn't. It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential.

A poet is seldom hard up for advice. The worst part of it all is that sometimes the advice is coming from other poets, and they ought to know better.

I think it's better if you write poems that look like you.

Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.

Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it.

Say nothing and just make music and you'll find plenty to say.

You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.