I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….

Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.

Lists are a form of power.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.

An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.