It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.

To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.

What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.