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"Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense."
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Exlpore more Curiosity quotes

"The courage to ask question is the willingness to know."

"I wonder. Of course maybe that isn't what they figure to do. Maybe they aren't going to do any such thing. But it's natural that's what they would do and I heard that word."

"If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity."

"Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect."
Explore more quotes by John Barton

"Most victims of my autobiographical verse are either far too polite, remarkably understanding unaware that I have written poems about them."

"An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive."

"We are comfortable with the fact that we cannot know personally what happened in the world before we were born, yet we are uncomfortable with the notion that we will stop engaging with time at some point in the future."

"My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don't want our lives to end."

"I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have."

"Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools."

"I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy."

"To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that."
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