To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

I need about one hundred fifty drafts of a poem to get it right, and fifty more to make it sound spontaneous.

What I want is to be willing to fail rather than stagnate.

There are so many selves in everybody, and just to explore and exploit one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative person.

What a view, i said again. The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.

So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.

I once had the nerve to ask Picasso the question, 'What is art?' He answered, 'Art is a lie which makes us see the truth.