I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.

I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.

The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.

There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.