The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
All great art is born of the metropolis.
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Rhythm must have meaning.
Poetry must be as well written as prose.
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
The artist is the antenna of the race.
The artist is always beginning.
Glance is the enemy of vision.
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Good art however ‘immoral’ is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.
A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.
To break the pentameter, that was the first heave.
The temple is holy because it is not for sale.
The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
With one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough.