I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

Originality is being different from oneself, not others.

Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland.

All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.

Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.

One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.