“In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.”

“We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.”

“The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.”

“A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.”

“To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”

“The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.”

“Nonsense and beauty have close connections.”

“One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.”

“Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.”

“Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.”

“History develops, art stands still.”