C. Day Lewis

“A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.”

“I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.... We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”