The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book.

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

As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.

...after a night spent writing poetry, one is almost happy to hear the milkman at the door.

It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.

In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.

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