“It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.”

“All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.”

“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”

“On No Work of WordsOn no work of words now for three lean months in the bloodyBelly of the rich year and the big purse of my bodyI bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:To take to give is all, return what is hungrily givenPuffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing deathThat will rake at last all currencies of the marked breathAnd count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seasIf I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”

“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.”

“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.”

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”