Others

On a tree by a river a little tom-tit

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

A wandering minstrel I—

Hugo—alas!

Light (God’s eldest daughter) is a principal beauty in building.

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul.

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

I’d as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

Most of the change we think we see in life

Some are weather-wise, some are otherwise.

Madame Bovary, c’est moi.

Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.

Books are made not like children but like pyramids … and they’re just as useless! and they stay in the desert! … Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them.

Books are made not like children but like pyramids … and they’re just as useless! and they stay in the desert! … Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.