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

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.

But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.

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

Poetry makes nothing happen.

Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.