“. . . poetry, like all imaginative creations, divines the human enterprise. This is poetry's social value.”

“In 1914... [German] history, poetry, dream and the individual moment were all combined in one exhilarating sensation...The nation was a creation of one's imagination, a poetic truth, an ethical, not a social, construct... blind obedience was the true value... the stronger a person is... the more he obeys.”

“Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside its own language-group.”

“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”

“The accepted view appears to be that Neruda represent the real Chile: a place of poetry, freedom of spirit and international enterprise.”

“There are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.”