Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer's sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

I think that everyone who took part has always been grateful for it.

Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

Your dreams and goals are bigger than small minded people or the fears that they harbor. Don’t let their ocean of fear trap you in the undertow.

Dare to live the fairytale.

...the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected.

If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.

In low theologies, hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell.

That’s what seems the most sad to me—that neither of them even think there’s a possibility they can be together.

You can’t really change the heart without telling a story.

I've kind of always done diagrams. It helped me think.

Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.

So mathematical truth prefers simple words since the language of truth is itself simple.