Robert Morgan Quotes

Powerful Robert Morgan for Daily Growth

About Robert Morgan

Robert Morgan (born February 3, 1944) is an acclaimed American novelist, poet, and professor, celebrated for his evocative and deeply-rooted stories set in the Appalachian region of North Carolina where he was born and raised. Robert Morgan spent his early years in a small town named Burnsville, nestled within the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains. The rugged beauty of his native landscape profoundly influenced his writing, often serving as both setting and symbol within his novels. After completing high school, Morgan attended Appalachian State University and later received his Master's degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His literary career began in 1970 with the publication of his first book, "The Falconer," a collection of poetry that won him the Young American Poets Award. This marked the beginning of an impressive oeuvre that spans over four decades and encompasses works of both fiction and non-fiction. Morgan's notable novels include "Brave Enemies" (1980), "Gap Creek" (1997), which was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, and "Chief Musician" (2004). His works are characterized by their exploration of love, family, and community set against the backdrop of the Appalachians. Beyond writing, Morgan has been a dedicated teacher. He currently serves as the John C. and Nancy Lee Harrelson Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His influence on generations of aspiring writers is immeasurable. Robert Morgan's rich body of work continues to resonate with readers, drawing them into the timeless, vivid world of his native Appalachia. His literary legacy endures as a testament to the power of storytelling and the unwavering bond between people and place.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"The more I live, the more I learn: simplicity is the key to everything."

This quote suggests that as we gain life experiences, we come to understand that simplicity - a state of being uncomplicated and straightforward - holds the key to understanding many aspects of life. The author is emphasizing that complexities often obscure the truth or beauty of a situation, and by approaching life with simplicity, we can better grasp its essence and find harmony in it.

"Life's too short for small dreams."

This quote by Robert Morgan emphasizes that one should aim high in life, as the limited time we have on Earth is not meant to be wasted on modest aspirations. It encourages individuals to set ambitious goals, as the potential rewards often outweigh the risks and effort required. Small dreams may provide temporary contentment but are unlikely to bring significant personal growth or fulfillment. Pursuing bold ambitions can lead to a more meaningful and impactful life experience.

"There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder."

This quote by Robert Morgan emphasizes the boundless potential for human growth and development. It suggests that the only limitations we face are self-imposed, as our intelligence, creativity, and curiosity have no inherent bounds. In other words, if we continue to challenge ourselves, explore new ideas, and think beyond conventional boundaries, there's no limit to what we can achieve and create. It encourages an optimistic and ambitious outlook on human capability and progress.

"In every man's heart there burns a fire, and at times it flames up and illuminates his whole life; but most men bank their fire too low, content with the warmth it gives them."

This quote by Robert Morgan suggests that within each individual lies an innate passion or drive (the "fire") that has the potential to significantly impact and transform their lives. However, many people suppress or underestimate this passion, choosing instead to lead a life of comfort and predictability ("banking their fire too low"). The challenge is to recognize and nurture one's passions to unleash their full potential and illuminate one's life with meaning and purpose.

"The only thing that is constant in this world is change."

This quote by Robert Morgan emphasizes the perpetual, unavoidable nature of change in our world. It implies that we should expect and embrace alterations as they are an inherent part of life. Change can bring growth, opportunities, and progress, but it can also be challenging and disruptive. Understanding this fundamental truth helps us adapt, remain flexible, and cultivate resilience in the face of change.

A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.

- Robert Morgan

Through, Stereotypes, Been, Thrilling

The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged.

- Robert Morgan

Mature, Very, Carefully, Volumes

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

- Robert Morgan

Think, I Think, Read, Southerners

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

- Robert Morgan

Thought, More, Use, Pointed

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

- Robert Morgan

Some, Though, Regional, Appalachian

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

- Robert Morgan

Mathematics, Through, Very, Translation

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

- Robert Morgan

The Most Important, Read, Translation

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person.

- Robert Morgan

My Life, Everybody, Occurred, Part-Time

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

- Robert Morgan

Rock And Roll, Young, Read, Perceptions

The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new.

- Robert Morgan

Art, New, Very, Avant-Garde

I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else.

- Robert Morgan

City, New, Area, Surprises

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.

- Robert Morgan

Think, I Think, Learned, Impersonate

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

- Robert Morgan

Think, Young, Very, Young Writers

Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start.

- Robert Morgan

Stories, Almost Everyone, Young Writers

Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.

- Robert Morgan

Young, Audience, Find, Young Writers

I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt.

- Robert Morgan

Stereotypes, Idea, Dirt, Cliches

When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.

- Robert Morgan

Doing, Think, Prose, Normally

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

- Robert Morgan

Memorable, Wrong, Something, Free Verse

The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

- Robert Morgan

Decision, Prose, Almost, Verse

The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.

- Robert Morgan

Fact, Blank, Form, Verse

Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.

- Robert Morgan

Art, Think, I Think, Distort

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.

- Robert Morgan

Unexpected, Go, Devices, Distort

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

- Robert Morgan

Values, Famous, Some, Faulkner

If people associate me with a region, that's fine with me.

- Robert Morgan

Me, People, Fine, Region

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

- Robert Morgan

Southern, Still, Poems, Forms

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

- Robert Morgan

Modern, More, Watershed, Modern Poetry

We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.

- Robert Morgan

Very, Read, Well Known, 20th Century

With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.

- Robert Morgan

More, Tension, Prose, Sustain

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.

- Robert Morgan

Love, Fact, Part, Timeless

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

- Robert Morgan

Think, In The Past, Been, Oddly

Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.

- Robert Morgan

Some, Over, Away, Excitement

Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

- Robert Morgan

Some, Doubts, Courses, Helps

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

- Robert Morgan

Nostalgia, Distance, Maybe, Objectivity

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

- Robert Morgan

Go, How Far, Discovering, Philosophical

Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.

- Robert Morgan

Humor, Sense Of Humor, Irresistible

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

- Robert Morgan

Writing, Think, Industry, Creative Writing

I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood.

- Robert Morgan

Will, Tell, Bring, Painful

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

- Robert Morgan

Father, Seem, Poems, Extreme

I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale.

- Robert Morgan

Love, Very, Compare, Evoke

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

- Robert Morgan

Language, Kind, About, Poets

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

- Robert Morgan

Been, Southern, Maybe, Poets

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

- Robert Morgan

Places, Intimacy, Characters, Events

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

- Robert Morgan

Voice, Poem, Still, Connection

I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do.

- Robert Morgan

Curiosity, Through, I Write, Partly

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

- Robert Morgan

Attention, Form, Almost, Calls

The Black Mountain poet I like most is the early Creeley. Those early poems seem very lyrical and very traditional, with a lot of voice and character.

- Robert Morgan

Voice, Like, Very, Lyrical

Neither of my parents has been very sensitive about my writing.

- Robert Morgan

Writing, Been, Very, Neither

One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.

- Robert Morgan

Go, Use, Devices, Minute

In the late 60s and early 70s, I did get interested in voices, and in narration and embodying the voice, making the poem sound like a real person talking.

- Robert Morgan

Voice, Making, Like, Poem

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

- Robert Morgan

Deep, Back, Analytical, Dive

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

- Robert Morgan

Love, Like, Textures, You Can Do It

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.

- Robert Morgan

See, Makes, Actually, Recognize

I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems.

- Robert Morgan

Love, Some, Which, Poems

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

- Robert Morgan

Going, Very, Took, Film School

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

- Robert Morgan

Think, Will, I Think, Likely

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

- Robert Morgan

Fiction, Itself, Almost, Invisible

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