“The past above, the future belowand the present pouring down: the roar,the roar of the present, a speech--is, of necessity, my sole concern.”

“According to my present theme the writer of imagination would attain closest to the conditions of music not when his words are dissassociated from natural objects and specified meanings but when they are liberated from the usual quality of that meaning by transportation into another medium, the imagination.”

“We sit and talk,quietly, with long lapses of silenceand I am aware of the streamthat has no language, coursingbeneath the quiet heaven ofyour eyeswhich has no speech”

“Danse Russe If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?”

“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.”

“Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.”

“So most of my life has been lived in hell.”