Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.

I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound; but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.

Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -henceforth?- the subject to which you are condemned.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.