What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's.

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.