“If anybody ever shuts you in Indiana...and you don't at least write some unconstrained something or other, I give up hope for your salvation.”

“It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.”

“ The Lake IsleO God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,With the little bright boxespiled up neatly upon the shelvesAnd the loose fragrant cavendishand the shag,And the bright Virginialoose under the bright glass cases,And a pair of scales not too greasy,And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,Lend me a little tobacco-shop,or install me in any professionSave this damn’d profession of writing,where one needs one’s brains all the time.”

“No one knows, at sight a masterpiece.And give up verse, my boy,There's nothing in it.Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:Don't kick against the pricks,Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your gameAnd died, there's nothing in it.”

“M'amour, m'amourwhat do I love andwhere are you?That I lost my centerfighting the worldThe Dreams clashand are shattered-and that I tried to make a paradisoterrestre.I have tried to write ParadiseDo not moveLet the wind speakthat is paradiseLet the Gods forgive what Ihave madeLet those I love try to forgivewhat I have made.”

“I have tried to write ParadiseDo not moveLet the wind speakthat is paradise.Let the Gods forgive what Ihave madeLet those I love try to forgivewhat I have made.”

“Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.”