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

I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around.

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

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

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.

It is almost impossible for the poetess, once laurelled, to take off the crown for good or to reject values and taste of those who tender it.

... 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.