If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try.
It is axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time; conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
Sincerity is technique.
I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.
Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
The only way to spend New Year’s Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance ’till you drop.
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
I know nothing, except what everyone knows – if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
We must love one another or die.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep.
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.