I have lost faith in universal panaceas - work is the one thing in which I really believe.

Poetry is often generations in advance of the thought of its time.

Women have no wilderness in them They are provident instead Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread.

The art of one period cannot be approached through the attitudes (emotional or intellectual) of another.

It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Up from the bronze, I saw Water without a flaw Rush to its rest in air Reach to its rest, and fall.