The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.

Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it.

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its makers attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.

Something of the previous state, however, survives every change. This is called in the language of cybernetics (which took it form the language of machines) feedback, the advantages of learning from experience and of having developed reflexes.