I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.

The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped.

Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line.

A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.

Wake the happy words.

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.