Delmore Schwartz's Quotes

Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.

Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.

Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.

All poets' wives have rotten lives Their husbands look at them like knives.

I always cause those who are near to me more suffering than pleasure.

I am of Russian-Jewish distraction.

The Jew is at once alienated and indestructible; he is in exile from his own country and in exile even from himself, yet he survives the annihilating fury of history.

What was the freedom to which the adult human being rose in the morning, if each act was held back or inspired by the overpowering ghost of a little child?

I can remember standing in the middle of the field after the race and seeing the American flag raised and hearing 'The Star Spangled Banner' and all the people singing it. Then I walked off the field and just kind of enjoyed the feeling.

Everything about the Olympics was first class, and women were treated as athletes and equals.

I was running to catch a train when one of my teachers saw me. He thought I was fast, time me, and later gave me my first instructions in sprinting. I happened to be at the right place at the right time.