The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.

What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.

To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity.

I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.