“No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.”

“You are not here to verify,instruct yourself, or inform curiosityor carry report. You are here to kneelwhere prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.”

“Home is where one starts from.”

“As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.”

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”

“Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.”

“So the lover must struggle for words.”

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

“Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?”