Stephen Dunn quotes:

I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit.

Although I know it's unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.

Although I know it's unfair I reveal myself one mask at a time.

I've triedto become someone else for a while,only to discover that he, too, was me.

Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive.

Originality, of course, is what occurs when something new arises out of what's already been done.

What feeling feels like over time. An attempt to screw up what feeling feels like over time. Heartbreak and a high C.... The often welcome melodic lie.... The soul's undersong. The orchestration of randomness, a flirtation with the boundaries of silence and space.... a reminder that the self wants to disappear, be taken away from itself and returned.

Altruism is for thosewho can't endure their desires.There's a worldas ambiguous as a moan,a pleasure moanour earnest neighborsmight think a crime.It's where we could live.I'll say I love you,Which will lead, of course,to disappointment,but those words unsaidpoison every next moment.I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.--Mon Semblable

I'll say I love you,Which will lead, of course,to disappointment,but those words unsaidpoison every next moment.I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.

I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.

All good poems are victories over something.

And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have.

Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers.

Everything I can't see / is at least as real as what I can.

exaggerated sunsets / splashed with rain, odd collisions / of roots, animals, seeds. / I didn't like a thing I saw, / so much effort to be strange.

I love what's left after love has been tested.

I make myself up from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, that's when I worry.

I will try to disappoint you better than anyone ever has.

I'll always deny that I kissed her. I was just whispering into her mouth.

Isn't there a curious elegance in how one moment passes into another?

I've had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent.

Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.

Oh abstractions are just abstract until they have an ache in them.

Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.

There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.

When I stop becoming, that's when I worry.