Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me.

I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't.

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic with divine creatures who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that.

I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.