Paul Valery on Poetry

“The greatness of poets is that they grasp with their words what they only glimpse with their minds.”

“Of all occupations the poet’s is perhaps the one in which the greatest impatience has an essential need of the greatest patience.”

“A professional poet is a man (or woman, of course) who sits down regularly at the table of his mind to try his luck. It is a game of mixed chance. Cards are dealt, and the player calculates. He plays against the common language. A person plays against a brain, a semi-external being against a wholly internal one. Against oneself.”

“For a poet, it is never a matter of saying it is raining. It’s a matter of…making rain.”