“Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.”

Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.

Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.

The true enemy of man is generalization.

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.