Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

At the still point, there the dance is.

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.

Old men ought to be explorers.

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.