It is dark now. The snow is deep blue and the ocean nearly black. It is time for some music.

I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there.

... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get the two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.

Do we always make our freedom out of someone else's bondage?

I suppose one has to remember that 'life' is important too, though it's something I forget in some moods, everything except work seeming like an interruption or really non-life.

For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.

Being very rich as far as I am concerned is having a margin. The margin is being able to give.