“The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.”

“The fact that a good poem will never wholly submit to explanation is not its deficiency but its very life. One lives every day what he cannot define. It is feeling that is first. What one cannot help but sense in good poetry is a sense of the whole language stirring toward richer possibilities than one could have foreseen.”

“One night I dreamed I was locked in my Father's watchWith Ptolemy and twenty-one ruby starsMounted on spheres and the Primum MobileCoiled and gleaming to the end of spaceAnd the notched spheres eating each other's rindsTo the last tooth of time, and the case closed.”

“The public library is the most dangerous place in town”

“Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.”

“A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. ”

“I have one head that wants to be good,And one that wants to be bad.And always, as soon as I get up,One of my heads is sad.”