Louis Dudek Quotations

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

There are two kinds of people; those who are always well and those who are always sick. Most of the evils of the world come from the first sort and most of the achievement from the second.

All the ills of mankind spring from belonging to a race, a nation, a city, a group of some kind. The ideal would be to belong to none, and to care for allbut who is capable of that?

There is no original sin. It's all been done before.

The best live among us in disguise.

Intellectually, most people never wash. They never free their minds of the accumulated rubbish of centuries.

Imagination should be integrated with life, not turned into a separate activity, art, that monopolizes one's whole existence.

Hatred isgeneralized, but love is for the particular.

The twentieth century had a wonderful capacity for seeing nothing as the sum of everything.

A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.

In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake.

A good reputation is better than fame.

Canada is a country where the serious writers are hockey fans and readers of comic books. They don't play chess.

Art is anything people do with distinction.

Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative.

What is forgiven is usually well remembered.