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

“A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.”

“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.”

“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. ”

“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.”

“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.”