"You mustn't forget the circumstances I have been brought up in, the little education I have had."

"Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way."

"I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on."

"I despair of ever writing excellent poetry."

"Nothing can justify war."

"Being by the nature of my upbringing, all my energies having been directed to one channel of activity, crippled from other activities and made helpless even to live."

"Poetical appreciation is only newly bursting on me."

"I never joined the army for patriotic reasons."

"I wanted to write a battle song for the Judeans but so far I can think of nothing noble and weighty enough."

"I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do."