How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.

At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor; at twenty not to shoot at all; I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary.

Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.

Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing; the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear; and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.

But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly.

The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!

I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry; all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.