“A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off”

“If you commit yourself to the art of poetry, you commit yourself to the task of learning how to see, using words as elements of sight and their sounds as prisms. And to see means to see something worth all the agony of learning how to see.”

“The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.”

“The only thing about a man that is a man . . . is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.”

“What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.”

“What is more important to a library than anything else -- than everything else -- is the fact that it exists."[The Premise Of Meaning, American Scholar; Washington, DC, June 5, 1972]”

“Ars PoeticaA poem should be palpable and muteAs a globed fruit,DumbAs old medallions to the thumb,Silent as the sleeve-worn stoneOf casement ledges where the moss has grown—A poem should be wordlessAs the flight of birds.A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs,Leaving, as the moon releasesTwig by twig the night-entangled trees,Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,Memory by memory the mind—A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs.A poem should be equal to:Not true.For all the history of griefAn empty doorway and a maple leaf.For loveThe leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—A poem should not meanBut be.”