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

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

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.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we’ve had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.

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

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

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

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

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.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

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.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

I found that part of it towards San Salvador extending from north to south five leagues, and the other side which we coasted along, ran from east to west more than ten leagues.

I spent more time on dark ships in danger zones than any other woman in the world.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.

You learn a lot from traveling around.

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

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

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.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

I am in the world feeling my way to light ‚amid the encircling gloom.‘

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

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

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

However, because Britain is young and exciting, I did show my second line here once or twice.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‚Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.‘ I said that because we all cried for a week. The city gave us a goodbye party, and it lasted a week.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

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.

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

I am not solicitous to examine particularly everything here, which indeed could not be done in fifty years, because my desire is to make all possible discoveries, and return to your Highnesses, if it please our Lord, in April.

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.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.