I, too, dislike it. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.

Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.

To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it.

[The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion.

Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?

As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.

Among animals, one has a sense of humor. Humor saves a few steps, it saves years.

What is our innocence, What is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

The mind is an enchanting thing is an enchanted thing, like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion.

Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible.

The mind is an enchanting thing.

The sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it's not a Herod's oath that cannot change.

I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false.

I'm troubled. I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish.

When we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

All are / naked, none is safe.

The sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.

The Irish say your trouble is their trouble and your joy their joy? I wish I could believe it; I am troubled, I'm dissatisfied, I'm Irish.

The power of the visible is the invisible.

One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.

Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.

The cynics in life are the people who are always trying to do things for people who don't want things done for them.

Excess is the common substitute for energy.

When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ...

The weak overcomes its/ menace, the strong over-/comes itself.

In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.

At all events there is in Brooklyn something that makes me feel at home.

One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express ...

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.

I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.

We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.

Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.

It is in general true that in order to create works of art one has to have leisure. On the other hand I think that one needs to experience resistance in a practical sense, and even that which is poignant to bring out what makes easy reading for others. Too much deprivation of course, means death.