“The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.

The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.

Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.

A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples, And grow a fair amount of nettles.

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.

I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.

Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.

All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.

I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.

Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.

It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.

I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.

It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.

A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.

I met the surgeon general – he offered me a cigarette.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.

It is generally believed that our science is empirical and that we draw our concepts and our mathematical constructs from the empirical data.

I have quite good general knowledge and I had a very drilled education from an early age. I do know more than most people.

Scientists – the crowd that for dash and style make the general public look like the Bloomsbury set.

In general, corruption tends to exist whenever governments have favors to extend, or something to sell.

The whole thing in general started by us wanting to impact the Kingdom and bringing as much glory to God as possible.