Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky

I love form, but I'm not interested in forms. I've never written a sonnet or villanelle or sestina or any of that. For me, it's a kind of line. It's a rhythm. It's something musical.

Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds

If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting.

Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet.

Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead

I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves
Toomas Hendrik Ilves

There was a period in my life when I was very young that I wrote a sonnet a day just to learn concision in writing.

10 Things I Hate About You
10 Things I Hate About You

Michael: Sweet love, renew thy force.
[Start of Shakespeare's Sonnet LVI]
Patrick: Hey! Don't say shit like that to me. People can hear you.

Batman Returns
Batman Returns

Bruce Wayne: Here's what I want you to do... tell Selina - tell Miss Kyle in there - tell her, uh, tell her I had to go out of town, a big business deal came up or some... no, you know what? Tell her, you know, not in some dumb, "be my girlfriend" kind of way...
Alfred: I will relay the message.
Bruce Wayne: Great.
[runs out]


Alfred: Miss Kyle...
Selina Kyle: Alfred, hi!
Alfred: Mr. Wayne told me to tell you...
Selina Kyle: Mr. Wayne? Oh, Bruce. Yes. Um, would you tell him for me that, uh, I've been going through a lot of changes, and... no. Um, just that this is not a rejection, my abruptly leaving. In fact, he makes me

feel the way I hope I really am... no! Could you just make up a sonnet or something? A dirty limerick?
Alfred: One has just sprung to mind.
Selina Kyle: Thanks!
[runs out]

Pride & Prejudice
Pride & Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet: And that put paid to it. I wonder who first discovered the power of poetry in driving away love?
Mr. Darcy: I thought that poetry was the food of love.
Elizabeth Bennet: Of a fine stout love, it may. But if it is only a vague inclination I'm convinced one poor sonnet will kill it stone dead
Mr.

Darcy: So what do you recommend to encourage affection?
Elizabeth Bennet: Dancing. Even if one's partner is barely tolerable.

Wild Wild West
Wild Wild West

Artemus Gordon: I've been trying to place myself in Loveless' shoes.
Capt. James West: Good luck with that one.
Artemus Gordon: What could this demented maniac with no reproductive organs, want with Rita?
Artemus Gordon: [Rita falls through the train's sliding roof, beside West, unseen by Gordon] Which is not

to say Rita doesn't possess a beauty worthy of a Shakespeare sonnet or a Botticelli painting. My god, the curvature of her buttocks and the swell of that magnificent bosom. So full, so sumptous, so...
Artemus Gordon: [turns and notices Rita] ... what were all those foreign ministers doing at Loveless' party? This is what really puzzles me, did you have any idea there were

so many, so foreign, so...
[quietly to West]
Artemus Gordon: How long has she been here?
Capt. James West: Somewhere around Botticelli's buttocks.
Artemus Gordon: I am profoundly sorry.