How slowly one comes to understand anything!

... 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.

in the very long run any success devours - and perhaps also corrupts.

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

We only keep what we lose.

I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.

There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.