“Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels.”

“You remember I had a strong inclination all my life to be a painter. Under different circumstances I would rather have been a painter than to bother with these god-damn words. I never actually thought of myself as a poet but I knew I had to be an artist in some way.”

“There is nothing sacred about literature, it is damned from one end to the other. There is nothing in literature but change and change is mockery. I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.”

“I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.”

“Filth and vermin though they shock the over-nice are imperfections of the flesh closely related in the just imagination of the poet to excessive cleanliness.”

“The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts usto make roses stand before thorns. Surelove is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse—at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older,I to love and you to be loved, we have,no matter how, by our wills survived to keepthe jeweled prize always at our finger tips.We will it so and so it is past all accident.”