“A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.”

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

“A writer, or at least a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: “Whom do you write for?” The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover I don’t want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other’s existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author.”

“Lay your sleeping head, my love,Human on my faithless arm;”

“No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.”

“The nightingales are sobbing inThe orchards of our mothers,And hearts that we broke long agoHave long been breaking others;Tears are round, the sea is deep:Roll them overboard and sleep. ”

“Although you be, as I am, one of those Who feel a Christian ought to write in prose,For poetry is magic: born in sin, you May read it to exorcies the Gentile in you.”