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James Dickey Biography

James Lafayette Dickey (February 2, 1923 – January 19, 1997) was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966. He also received the Order of the South award. Dickey was also a novelist, known for Deliverance (1970) which was adapted into an acclaimed film of the same name.

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James Dickey Quotes

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

Lightning, Poet, Poetry, Rain, Struck

Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.

Flight, Flying, Men, Modern, Pilots, Sensation

The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.

Domesticity, Literature, Mixture, Mixtures, Unique, Women

Find something only you can say

Beautiful, Inspirational, Life, Say

There ain't nothin' to dyin', really. You just get tired. You kind of drift away.

Away, Drift, Dyin, Kind, Tired

I do think the author ought to be able to give a good reason for the way things are in his poem. Not a bad question to ask oneself.

Able, Author, Give, Giving, Question, Thinking

So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.

Caused, Destruction, Modern, Place, Takes, War

William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time.

Editors, Our Time, Packard, Time, William

Find out what you do best, and then don't do it.

I don’t believe that a reviewer or a critic can really criticize well unless he can praise well.

Believe, Criticize, Praise, Reviewer, Unless

The true feeling of sex is that of a deep intimacy, but above all of a deep complicity.

Complicity, Feelings, Intimacy, Sex, True

You are bound, my hunch is, to make it just fine.

Bound, Bounds, Fine, Hunch, Hunches

He can't imagine the result of the mission because he never saw it.

Imagine, Mission, Result, Results, Saw, Saws

The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.

Body, Fake, One Thing, Thing

What I want is to be willing to fail rather than stagnate.

Fail, Failing, Stagnate, Want, Willing

Yet technique matters, even so. God uses it, for a buffalo is not a leopard.

Buffalo, Leopards, Matters, Technique, Writing

I need about one hundred fifty drafts of a poem to get it right, and fifty more to make it sound spontaneous.

Drafts, Fifty, Hundred, Make, Needs, Sound

What a view, i said again. The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.

Indifference, Mindless, Moon, Rivers, Tiny, Views

To live a very long time. . . is supposed to be the desired object of all human life. But it is not. The main thing is to ride the flood tide. . . How glorious it is to create! For those few moments of a lifetime when the stream is running full and deep: those are the justification for everything.

Deep, Desired, Human, Life, Long, Running

Detachment produces a peculiar state of mind. Maybe that's the worst sentence of all, to be deprived of feeling what a human being ought to be entitled to feel.

Entitled, Feelings, Mind, Peculiar, Produces

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