Yay, Old'uns' Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord'nary, but it din't master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more.
Love, our subject: we've trained it like ivy to our walls.
Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome.
You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.
The moment when a feeling enters the body is political. This touch is political
A life I didn't choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.
I should be writing a poem every morning but I'm not.
Not even for an hour can you bear to be alone, nor can you advantageously apply your leisure time, but you endeavor, a fugitive and wanderer, to escape from yourself, now vainly seeking to banish remorse by wine, and now by sleep; but the gloomy companion presses on you, and pursues you as you fly.
The retreat of a minor piece to the back rank, where it cuts the lines of communication between the rooks, is permissable only in exceptional cases.
I totally believe in romance and love and all that.