Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.

Children know the grace of god better than most of us. They see the world the way the morning brings it back to them; new and born and fresh and wonderful.

A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off

If the poem can be improved by the author's explanations, it never should have been published.

We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.

See the world as it truly is, small and blue, beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats.

A poem should not mean but be.