“Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.”

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

Look not in my eyes, for fear They mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me.

June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter’s cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mould.

Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

When the journey’s over, There’ll be time enough to sleep.

To justify God’s ways to man.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill.

Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

Ten thousand times I’ve done my best and all’s to do again.

Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.

Housman is one of my heroes and always has been. He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but and absolutely marvellous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar.

Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.

All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.

The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes. I didn’t mind going to jail for, what, five, six hours? It was absolutely worth it.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.

In the house of poetry nothing endures that is not written with blood to be heard with blood.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.