“Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.”

“Poetry makes nothing happen.”

“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.”

“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”

“But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.”

“Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.”

“For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executivesWould never want to tamper, flows on southFrom ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,A way of happening, a mouth.”