A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

The work of creation is never without travail.

When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

Between the vision and the act lies the shadow.

Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

The role of art is not to express the personality but to overcome it.