I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.

I cry. Evil dissolves, & love, like foam; that love. Prattle of children powers me home, my heart claps like the swan's under a frenzy of who love me & who shine.

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.

Them lady poets must not marry, pal.

I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature.

We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.