“The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.”

Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

Well, we’ve been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.

Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.

One smile relieves a heart that grieves.

The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.

Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.

There is one story and one story only.

She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to go away as soon as their money was spent. She said that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it.

Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.

I don’t really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn’t create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.

If I were a young man With my bones full of marrow, Oh, if I were a bold young man Straight as an arrow, I’d store up no virtue For Heaven’s distant plain, I’d live at ease as I did please And sin once again.

No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.

The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

As far as I’m concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that’s the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work.

Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet.

There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though – ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature – and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away.

Tension, especially with regard to horror, is a very difficult thing to sustain in the big sense.

It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.

We humans have the capacity to wreak horrors on each other. But we also have the capacity to survive those horrors.

The unspeakable horrors behind each eyes that see you – either admire you or envy you – protect your sanity with prayers.

It’s all there-the boredom, the devotion, the horror and even the humor in an industrial war fought on a global scale that we’ll never see again. Unit histories just do not get any better.