I read an interview with Margaret Mead in which she said, surprisingly, that declarative sentences are not important, they are merely incidental statements. "If one goes into a strange society and can do these three things, ask a question accurately, give a command accurately, and gloom and exclaim and enthuse at the proper moments, most of the rest of what you have to do is listen." I don't know anything about anthropology or linguistics, but it sure reminded me of poetry.

Kangaroo Beach, in Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, by Mary Ruefle

You simply cannot learn and know at the same time, and this is a frustration all artists must bear.

Kangaroo Beach, in Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, by Mary Ruefle

In regards to sentimentality, it seems to me you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. As I speak, blood is coursing through our bodies. As it moves away from the heart it marches to a 2/4 or 4/4 beat and it's arterial blood, reoxygenated, assertive, active, progressive, optimistic. When it reaches our extremities and turns toward home – the heart – well, it's nostalgic, it's venous blood (as in veins), it's tired, wavelike, rising and falling, fighting against gravity and inertia, and it moves to the beat of a waltz, a 3/4 beat, a little off, really homesick now, and full of longing. When we first write our poems, how arterial they seem! And when we go back to them, how venous they seem!

On Sentimentality, in Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, by Mary Ruefle

It's like those women who sell makeup in the department stores: the ones who wear white lab coats in an attempt to take seriously the great fun of painting your face. Poets do the same thing. ...without perceptual, as well as emotional, counterpoint, none of us could survive.

On Sentimentality, in Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, by Mary Ruefle

The great lunacy of most lyric poems is that they attempt to use words to convey what cannot be put into words.

Poetry and the Moon, in Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, by Mary Ruefle