Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise - that which is common to you, me, and everybody.

A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters.

Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise - that which is common to you, me, and everybody.

The artist tries to see what there is to be interested in... He has not created something, he has seen something.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.

The first time I ever felt the necessity or inevitableness of verse, was in the desire to reproduce the peculiar quality of feeling which is induced by the flat spaces and wide horizons of the virgin prairie of western Canada.

Prose is in fact the museum where the dead images of verse are preserved. In 'Notes', prose is 'a museum where all the old weapons of poetry kept.