“The dark uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.”

“I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.”

“A good poet is someone who manages in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms to be struck by lightning five or six times.”

“The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.”

“Ezra Pound - idiosyncrasy on a monument.”

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

“The dark uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.”

“There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this.”

“A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”

“The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)He mewed until I heard him in the house.I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.What he says and what he sees are limited.My own response is even more constricted.I think, "It's lucky; what you have is too."What do you have except--well, me?I joke about it but it's not a joke;The house and I are all he remembers.Next month how will he guess that it is winterAnd not just entropy, the universePlunging at last into its cold decline?I cannot think of him without a pang.Poor rumpled thing, why don't you seeThat you have no more, really, than a man?Men aren't happy; why are you?”

“It's ugly, but is it art?”