Reading [poetry], you know, is rather like opening the door to a horde of rebels who swarm out attacking one in twenty places at once - hit, roused, scraped, bared, swung through the air, so that life seems to flash by; then again blinded, knocked on the head - all of which are agreeable sensations for a reader (since nothing is more dismal than to open the door and get no response).

We scarcely wish to analyse what we feel to be so large and deeply human.

I ransack public libraries & find them full of sunk treasure.

What a labour writing is ... making one sentence do the work of a page; that's what I call hard work.

Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.