Laureate Quotes

In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether, the trick they miss is that being called this thing, with the weight of tradition behind it, and with the association of the Royal family, does allow you to have conversations and to open doors, and wallets, for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.

The poet laureate of England talked about murdering Jews on the West Bank.

I served the famous professors and scholars, and eventually they learned that the Reverend Moon is superior to them. Even Nobel laureate academics who thought they were at the center of knowledge are as nothing in front of me.

People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

Pretty much the day I stopped being laureate, the poems that had been few and far between came back to me, like birds in the evening nesting in a tree.