The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. --Jean Cocteau
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. --T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919
Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. --James Branch Cabell
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. --Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. --Paul Val�ry