My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer'; 'I'm sorry, not yet.

Learn from your dreams what you lack.

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.

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

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

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!