“I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they've ever questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn't know, because I won't ever dare ask that question.”

“I think, that if I touched the earth,It would crumble;It is so sad and beautiful,So tremulously like a dream.”

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

“Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast in the garden to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where's their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away. You're looking up at me now. I know what you're thinking, you poor little milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you should be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?”

“This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.”

“Dark is a way and light is a place,Heaven that never wasNor will be ever is always true"Poem on His Birthday”

“Clown in the Moon"My tears are like the quiet driftOf petals from some magic rose;And all my grief flows from the riftOf unremembered skies and snows.I think, that if I touched the earth,It would crumble;It is so sad and beautiful,So tremulously like a dream.”