All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."

The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?

How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.