“There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things”

“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious idea turns to the idea of God.”

“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious man turns to the idea of God.”

“A poem is a meteor.”

“After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.”

“Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.”

“Money is a kind of poetry.”

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”

“In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.”

“The imagination is man's power over nature.”

“To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.”