“You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.”

“I didn't humiliate him by pointing it out because that's not how you treat friends. You don't judge them. You don't humiliate them. I bet he's been judging me all along.”

“It was less humiliating to admit crying because of your feet than because - because somebody had been amusing himself with you and your friends had forgotten you, and other people patronised you.”

“It is always difficult for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend, but because their poems are bad.”

“New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises 'Why then are you not taking part in them?”

“Teddy looked at him directly for the first time.Are you a poet?' he asked.A poet?' Nicholson said. 'Lord, no. Alas, no. Why do you ask?'I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.' "- Teddy and Nicholson in "Teddy" (Nine Stories)”