“Come, drunks and drug-takers; come perverts unnerved!Receive the laurel, given, though late, on merit; to whom and wherever deserved.Parochial punks, trimmers, nice people, joiners true-blue,Get the hell out of the way of the laurel. It is deathless And it isn't for you.”

“I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around.”

“...Unaccustomed sense of peace did not depend on...'the whim of any fallible creature, or...economic security, or the weather. I don't know where it comes from. Jung states that such serenity is always a miracle...I am so glad that the therapists of my maturity and the saints of my childhood agree on one thing.”

“Pasture, stone wall, and steeple,What most perturbs the mind:The heart-rending homely people,Or the horrible beautiful kind?”

“You need some place to work in. That's the door half open.”

“In the country whereto I goI shall not see the face of my friendNor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses;Together we shall not findThe land on whose hills bends the new moonIn air traversed of birds.What have I thought of love?I have said, "It is beauty and sorrow."I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendorAs a wind out of old time . . .But there is only the evening here,And the sound of willowsNow and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water.-- from "Betrothed”

“You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth,You have said my name as a prayer.Here where trees are planted by waterI have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret,And your lips, closed over all that love cannot say.”