A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest.

I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

I read poetry to save time.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

Everybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

I don’t think of poetry as a ‚rational‘ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

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.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Often one postulates that a priori, all states are equally probable. This is not true in the world as we see it. This world is not correctly described by the physics which assumes this postulate.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.