Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

A banker warned the British poet Robert Graves that one could not grow rich writing poetry. He replied that if there was no money in poetry, there was certainly no poetry in money, and so it was all even.

The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.

Haunted Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine, Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing And lay ghost hands on everything, But leave the noonday's warm sunshine To living lads for mirth and wine. I met you suddenly down the street, Strangers assume your phantom faces, You grin at me from daylight places, Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet Dead men down the morning street.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

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

Fact is not truth, but a poet who wilfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.