“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?”

“What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice. ”

“And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.”

“She stood by the fireplace talking in that beautiful voice which made everything she said sound like a caress.”

“There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.”

“A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her.”

“For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”