Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

Part of my gradual education of myself has been to think that there is a deep relationship between the nature of the creature and the worth of the art.

Hope for a great sea-change timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks.

The whole relationship between a writer's spiritual/emotional condition and the kind of wordstuff and form-making that's going on in his work is an interesting one. When I was an undergraduate, there was a glib notion around that there was no reason to suppose a bad man could be a good writer.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.