“People should like poetry the way a child likes snow, and they would if poets wrote it.”

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”

“The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things.”

“Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.”

“Poetry is the scholar's art.”

“A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman. ”

“One must read poetry with one's nerves.”