You have to have something vicious in you to be a creative writersomething old-adamish, incompatible to the "ordinary world.

For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery

It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics.... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self.

Who knows the power that Saturn has over us, or Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time.

Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusions of my vague days, and offer them to me as dreams.

I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.