Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass. I cover all.

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.

There are men and women so lonely they believe God, too, is lonely.

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.

I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. Tell him to be different from other people if it comes natural and easy being different. Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives. Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural. Then he may understand Shakespeare and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov, Michael Faraday and free imaginations Bringing changes into a world resenting change. He will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own.