How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?

It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.

I was myself the compass of that sea: I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw Or heard or felt came not but from myself; And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

The point of vision and desire are the same.

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.