It seems to me a purely lyric poet gives himself, right down to his sex, to his mood, utterly and abandonedly, whirls himself roundtill he spontaneously combusts into verse. He has nothing that goes on, no passion, only a few intense moods, separate like odd stars, and when each has burned away, he must die.

My belief is in the blood and flesh as being wiser than the intellect. The body-unconsciou s is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos.

I'd be ashamed to see a woman walking around with my name-label on her, address and railway station, like a wardrobe trunk.

When each thing is unique in itself, there can be no comparison made.... There is only this strange recognition of present otherness.

Europe is, perhaps, the least worn-out of the continents, because it is the most lived in. A place that is lived in lives.

Sometimes snakes can’t slough. They can’t burst their old skin. Then they go sick and die inside the old skin, and nobody ever sees the new pattern. It needs a real desperate recklessness to burst your old skin at last. You simply don’t care what happens to you, if you rip yourself in two, so long as you do get out.

It always seemed to me that men wore their beards, like they wear their neckties, for show.