For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.

Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.

To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.

When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.

History is all explained by geography.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.