I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
Look out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can’t hear you calling. Look out how you use proud words.
Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
There was always the consolation that if I didn’t like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.
I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself.
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
I learned you can’t trust the judgment of good friends.
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven’t told the girl you are smitten with her.
Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don’t worry about my destiny.
Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.
We don’t have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.
A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
I couldn’t see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.
My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass. I cover all.