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

The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?

The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision.

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

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.

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.