Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.

Art is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we're writing, something comes through or should come through, in spite of our theories. So theories are not really important.

As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight.

It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death.

Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it.

In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.