Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten.

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.

The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.

Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.

Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul.

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius.

I do not sing nor play, but I adore music, particularly Chopin. I like him because I cannot understand him.

One must always say things that aim to interest, because in the world one must after all pay for one's keep.

I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.

I have been smashed and put back together so many times nothing works right. Nothing is where it should be, heavy thumping in my shoulder where my heart now beats.

It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.

Language most shows a man: speak that I may see thee.

There will always be someone being picked on at school, and it's not going to go away.

It was a dream come true performing with her and just being on the same record. So in my eyes, she was the epitome of a great voice and for us to share together was awesome.

My mother and I were like two continents moving slowly but inexorably apart; my father, the bridge builder, constantly extending the fragile edifice he had constructed to connect us.

I want to die while you love me, While yet you hold me fair, While laughter lies upon my lips, And lights are in my hair.

Sometimes you must leave everything and refresh yourself in the silence of a misty lake! Every such refreshment will give you an opportunity to make a long jump on the way to your target!

A boy in love is not mainly a calf but a poet.

I felt little awkward about taking one boyfriend to see a film starring another boyfriend.