Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot.

People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons. It's that last twenty-five percent that worries me.

Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.

Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.