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

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

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.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

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

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.

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.

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.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

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.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

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

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

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

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

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

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

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

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

Because the sweeter the cake, the more bitter the jelly can be.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

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

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

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.

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

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

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

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.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.