Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.

A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."

Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.

Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.

Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.