Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.

Survival is your strength not your shame.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.

When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.

Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us... and we drown.