"Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea"

"We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities"

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance"

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable"

"I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that"

"I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation"

"Personality is everything in art and poetry"

"I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention"

"Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry"

"Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry"

"The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs"