life is long between the desire and the spasm.

Sand. Everywhere. In the bed, in the shower, all over the floor. Grrrrr.

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God.

Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do ... is to write as little as possible

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

[On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.