A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
Randall JarrellIf we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.
Randall JarrellMore and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone.
Randall Jarrell