A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.

One's ignorance is one's chief asset.

The reading of a poem should be an experience. Its writing must be all the more so.

Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve music.

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.