The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.

Life always offers you a second chance. is called tomorrow.

This world is half the devil's and my own, Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl and curling round the bud that forks her eye.

My birthday began with the water - Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.

To begin at the beginning: It is a spring moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.

And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?

I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record.