If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.

The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.

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.

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.