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

To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.

The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.

Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.

The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.