Quotes

Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission. (1944)

It's a strange world made up of disappointments for the most part.

Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for.

To tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about - if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me. However, what I do write and allow to survive I always feel is worth while and that nobody else has ever come as near as I have to the thing I have intimated if not expressed. To me it's a matter of first understanding that which may not be put to words. I might add more but to no purpose. In a sense, I must express myself, you're right, but always completely incomplete if that means anything.

One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.

Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.

I thought my friends were damn fools, because they didn't know any better way of conducting their lives. Still they conformed better than I to a code. I wanted to conform but I couldn't so I wrote my poetry.

Love itself a flower with roots in a parched ground.

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

I cannot say that I have gone to hell for your love, but often found myself there in your pursuit. Hear me out. Do not turn away. I have learned much in my life from books and out of them about love. Death is not the end of it.