Agony without genius was gaucherie.

But the trek that starts with the feet always rises in time to the head. There had never been any of mankind's that didn't.

It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.

I always say that one's poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one's friends.

Every art is a church without communicants, presided over by a parish of the respectable. An artist is born kneeling; he fights to stand. A critic, by nature of the judgment seat, is born sitting.