Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

Offering Dragons quarter is no good, they regrow all their parts and come on again. They have to be killed.

These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. They are only meant to terrify & comfort.

This world is gradually becoming a place Where I do not care to be any more.

So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.

That is our ‘pointed task. Love & die.

I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.