"The prose writer drags meaning along with a rope, the poet makes it stand out and hit you."

“There is nothing to do but keep on.”

“My objection to metre is that it enables people to write verse with no poetic inspiration.”

“All emotions are the ore from which poetry may be sifted.”

“A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters.”

“The unit of significance in the poem is not the word but the phrase or sentence...a poet should consider the effect of the whole poem, not its local felicities.”

“In the light of absolute values man himself is judged to be limited or imperfect, while he can occasionally accomplish acts which partake of perfection, he, himself can never be perfect.”