I see at last that all the knowledgeI wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darknessAnd we call it wisdom. It is pain.
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
When I was young and miserable and prettyAnd poor, I’d wishWhat all girls wish: to have a husband,A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wishIs womanish:That the boy putting groceries in my carSee me.
There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this.
More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader and would no more read a book alone if they could help it than have a baby alone.
The dark uneasy world of family life – where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.
One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.
A good poet is someone who manages in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms to be struck by lightning five or six times.
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can’t read any poetry.