Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative. This personal morality may appear to be immorality itself in the eyes of those who lie to themselves, or who live a life of confusion, in such a manner that, for them, a lie becomes the truth, and our truth becomes a lie...

Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the perform-ance of a …

Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.

Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term 'escapism,' when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow onese…

The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.

[An attorney] can find it consistent with his dignity to turn wrong into right, and right into wrong, to abet a lie, nay to create, disseminate, and with all t…

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.