“Yule—Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner—of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner.”

“Poetry...... a place for the genuine,Hands that can grasp, eyesthat can dilate, hair that can rise”

“Truly as the sun can rot or mend, love can make one bestial or make a beast a man.”

“I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it”

“...when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination" --above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have it.”

“Nevertheless"you've seen a strawberrythat's had a struggle; yetwas, where the fragments met,a hedgehog or a star-fish for the multitudeof seeds. What better foodthan apple seeds - the fruitwithin the fruit - locked inlike counter-curved twinhazelnuts? Frost that killsthe little rubber-plant -leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can'tharm the roots; they still growin frozen ground. Once wherethere was a prickley-pear -leaf clinging to a barbed wire,a root shot down to growin earth two feet below;as carrots from mandrakesor a ram's-horn root some-times. Victory won't cometo me unless I goto it; a grape tendrilties a knot in knots tillknotted thirty times - sothe bound twig that's under-gone and over-gone, can't stir.The weak overcomes itsmenace, the strong over-comes itself. What is therelike fortitude! What sapwent through that little threadto make the cherry red!”

“You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability ratherthanan asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates formwe are justified in supposingthat you must have brains. For you, a symbol of theunit, stiff and sharp,conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority andliking for everythingself-dependent, anything anambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, toattempt through sheerreserve, to confuse presumptions resulting fromobservation, is idle. You cannot make usthink you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you arebrilliant, itis not because your petals are the without-which-nothingof pre-eminence. Would you not, minusthorns, be a what-is-this, a mereperculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, theelements, or mildew;but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliancewithout co-ordination? Guarding theinfinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience tothe remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-membered too violently,your thorns are the best part of you.”