“One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.”
“The man is nothing, the work—everything.”
“Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.”
“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”
“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.”
“Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but the ability to start over.”
“Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.”
“There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.”
“Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules.”
“There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.”
“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
“I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.”
“Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.”
“You can’t get too much winter in the winter.”
“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant—and let the air out of the tires.”
“A poem is best read in the light of all the other poems ever written.”
“The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.”