599 -“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

–anonymous [Misattributed to Plato, see Source Notes]

361 – “The New Colossus”

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’

–Emma Lazarus

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328 – “And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes and give airy nothings a local habitation and a name.”

–Theseus in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

243 – “Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writers, mystics, painters, troubadours: for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.”

-Jacob Nordby