The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind... The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself.

Every thought sounds like a footfall, Till a thought like a boot kicks down the wall.

Women, ever since there have been women, have had a way of being people.

Conversation succeeds conversation, Until there's nothing left to talk about Except truth, the perennial monologue, And no talker to dispute it but itself.

Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep.

Until the missing story of ourselves is told, nothing besides told can suffice us: we shall go on quietly craving it.

How our story has been divided up among the truth-telling professions! Religion, philosophy, history, poetry, compete with each other for our ears; and science competes with all together. And for each we have a different set of ears. But, though we hear much, what we are told is as nothing: none of it gives us ourselves, rather each story-kind steals us to make its reality of us.