Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: ‘As much neurosis as the child can bear.
For the error bred in the bone of each woman and each man craves what it cannot have, not universal love but to be loved alone.
For a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its readers, a dictionary is absolutely passive and may legitimately be read in an infinite number of ways.
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them – the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.
Let all your thinks be thanks.
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?