People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

The eyes of this dead lady speak to me For here was love, was not to be drowned out. And here desire, not to be kissed away. The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.

Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.