Top 30 James Broughton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The only limits are, as always, those of vision.”

— James Broughton

2. “At every crossroad, be prepared to bump into wonder.”

— James Broughton

3. “Follow your own weird.”

— James Broughton

4. “Life is adventure, not predicament.”

— James Broughton

5. “And to Shakespeare I owe my vision of the world as a theater, wherein all humans are acting out their parts.”

— James Broughton

6. “Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is.”

— James Broughton

7. “Everything that ever happened is still happening. Past, present and future keep happening in the eternity which is Here and Now.”

— James Broughton

8. “True delicacy is not a fragile thing.”

— James Broughton

9. “You’re closer to your glory leaping an abyss than re-upholstering a rut.”

— James Broughton

10. “I had a toy theater and a magic lantern, and when I was eight I built a stage for theatricals in the attic.”

— James Broughton

11. “If bitterness wants to get into the act, I offer it a cookie or a gumdrop.”

— James Broughton

12. “It was as important to live poetically as to write poems.”

— James Broughton

13. “Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.”

— James Broughton

14. “In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.”

— James Broughton

15. “We are all participants in the marvelous.”

— James Broughton

16. “Acclaim is a distraction.”

— James Broughton

17. “I often start writing in order to excite an expansive emotion.”

— James Broughton

18. “A born poet knows in his cradle that a poetic life is the only life worth living.”

— James Broughton

19. “The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy.”

— James Broughton

20. “I never wanted to dilute my private passion for the art by airing and arguing it in public.”

— James Broughton

21. “My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.”

— James Broughton

22. “Adversity is a stimulus.”

— James Broughton

23. “For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.”

— James Broughton

24. “Dance, vaudeville, drama, movies – as a child I loved everything that went on in a theater.”

— James Broughton

25. “I like things which appear fragile but are tough inside.”

— James Broughton

26. “I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.”

— James Broughton

27. “Most poets in their youth begin in adolescent sadness. I find it more rewarding to end in gladness.”

— James Broughton

28. “Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.”

— James Broughton

29. “Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be.”

— James Broughton

30. “My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.”

— James Broughton

31. “My earliest poems sing of the absolute necessity of allowing love to invade and pervade one’s life. That can make the miracle happen in reality. Try it.”

— James Broughton

32. “Consciousness is the glory of creation.”

— James Broughton

33. “Life’s major challenge: getting reborn often enough.”

— James Broughton

34. “Being identified as a poet in France or Denmark or India one is greeted with gracious respect.”

— James Broughton