Peter Porter (poet) quotes

We cannot know what John of Leyden felt
Under the Bishop's tongs – we can only
Walk in temperate London, our educated city,
Wishing to cry as freely as they did who died
In the Age of Faith. We have our loneliness
And our regret with which to build an eschatology. (Peter Porter (poet))

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold for which I thank the Paddington and Westminster Public Libraries.

Peter Porter (poet)

In the New World, happiness is enforced.

Peter Porter (poet)

A professional is one who believes he has invented breathing.

Peter Porter (poet)

Somewhere at the heart of the universe sounds the true mystic note: Me.

Peter Porter (poet)

Redeemers always reach the world too late. God dies, we live; God lives, we die. Our fate.

Peter Porter (poet)

Love without sex is still the most efficient form of hell known to man.

Peter Porter (poet)

In other words the pictures are in a kind of relationship with each other which is touching only at points rather than pictures being illustrations of poems or poems extrapolations of the pictures.

Peter Porter (poet)

I have no fondness for pure form at all.

Peter Porter (poet)

In Australia Inter alia, Mediocrities Think they're Socrates.

Peter Porter (poet)

Language of the liberal dead speaks
From the soil of Highgate, tears
Show a great water table is intact.
You cannot leave England, it turns
A planet majestically in the mind. (Peter Porter (poet))

As to whether the people who were supposedly to put up the money and did put it up or whether it was Arthur's own money is something which I shall never know.

Peter Porter (poet)

You can never tell when an artist really will take up someone's work and work with it happily.

Peter Porter (poet)

I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.

Peter Porter (poet)