And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.

I am not sure, once a poet has found out what has been written already, and how it was written - once, in short, he has learnt his trade - that he should bother with literature at all. Poetry is not like surgery, a technique that can be copied. Every operation the poet performs is unique, and need never be done again.

We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.

I like spaghetti because you don't have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it's all the same.

I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

Death: the anaesthetic from which none come round.