The dark, uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

More 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.

Read at whim! Read at whim!

I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness - that darkness flung me - Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.