“If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?”

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.

What is poetry which does not save nations or people?

You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.

I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.

Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.

I have absolutely no complaints about my life. But people think I got handed everything, all this kind of fell in my lap, that I was just God-gifted with all this talent. I wanted people to realize it’s a lot tougher than just waking up one day and you’re in the NHL.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing.

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.

Whatever is underneath all the drag, it actually doesn’t really matter. It kind of just matters, are you a great entertainer? And are you nice to work with? Are you good at your job?