“Who would one rather be? The one who desires, or the object of desire? One's answer to this question might determine if he is meant to be a poet or something else entirely.”

“I hit on something I believe when I wrote that I meant to be a Poet and a Poem. It may be that this is the desire of all reading women, as opposed to reading men, who wish to be poets and heroes, but might see the inditing of poetry in our peaceful age, as a sufficiently heroic act. No one wishes a man to be a Poem. That young girl in her muslin was a poem; cousin Ned wrote an execrable sonnet about the chaste sweetness of her face and the intuitive goodness shining in her walk. But now I think -- it might have been better, might it not, to have held on to the desire to be a Poet?”

“The poet is rather one who inspires than one inspired.”

“It's about people who still are unaware. Therefore they strive to live by all means: love like no one before them loved, believe like no one ever believed, desire like no one else ever desired...”

“when one has searched for these as realities, who desires and what is desired?”

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.”