“The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.”

“The bird of paradise alights only on the hand that does not grasp.”

“The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.”

“If your library is not "unsafe," it probably isn't doing its job.”

“The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.”

“We must travel in the direction of our fear.”

“We must travel in the direction of our fear.”

“I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.”

“You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.”

“I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.”

“quoted Lewis Hyde, whose pamphlet on John Berryman and alcohol he had read in his early months at Granada House: “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage.” Then he continued: This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing….[I]rony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks.”