The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true. . . . Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as: 'Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?'. . . . The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.

She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to go away as soon as their money was spent. She said that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it.

No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.

Since the age of 15 poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric.

Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.