A man’s house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery.

Poetry is not a way of saying things; it’s a way of seeing things.

Every war is its own excuse. That’s why they’re all surrounded with ideals. That’s why they’re all crusades.

Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil’s had the final say.

Poetry is not a way of saying things; it's a way of seeing things.

Keelhaul the poets in the vestry chairs.

Lawyers love paper. They eat, sleep and dream paper. They turn paper into gold, and their files are colorful and their language neoclassical and calli-graphically bewigged.

The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.

Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.

Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.