True revolutions in art restore more than they destroy.

A thousand kindnesses do not make up for a thousand blows.

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

Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.

I don't like quintessential certitude.

But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. ... It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at.

... how much of our inner substance is it good for us to give to public griefs? The whole modern tendency to agonize over the suffering of the entire globe is surely something new.