"No tears and the writer no tears and the reader."

"Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance."

"Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me."

"I hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also great."

"They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true."

"Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich."

"Education is hanging around until you've caught on."

"You can't get too much winter in the winter."

"The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them."

"Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward."

"A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes."

"A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman."

"But bid life seize the present? It lives less in the present Than in the future always, And less in both together Than in the past. The present Is too much for the senses, Too crowding, too confusing- Too present to imagine."

"Freedom lies in being bold."

"He moves in darkness as it seems to meNot of woods only and the shade of trees."

"Belief is better than anything else and it is best when rapt - above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever."

"You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's."

"My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane."

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat a homesickness or alovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

"I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,A luminary clock against the skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night."

"Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense."

"Part of a moon was falling down the west,Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.Its light poured softly in her lap. She sawAnd spread her apron to it. She put out her handAmong the harp-like morning-glory strings,Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,As if she played unheard the tendernessThat wrought on him beside her in the night."

"There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will."

"I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate wilfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth's the right place for love:I don't know where it's likely to go better."

"So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be."

"The only way out is through."

"The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected."

"How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?"

"The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."

"Nor is there wanting in the pressSome spirit to stand simply forth,Heroic in it nakedness,Against the uttermost of earth.The tale of earth's unhonored thingsSounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;And the mind whirls and the heart sings,And a shout greets the daring one."

"The only certain freedom's in departure."

"There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people."

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."

"At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument."

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."

"A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with."

"No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard."

"The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise."

"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

"No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm."How often already you've had to be told,Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.Dread fifty above more than fifty below."I have to be gone for a season or so."

"The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition."

"I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old."

"College is a refuge from hasty judgment."

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."

"Two such as you with such a master speed, cannot be parted nor be swept away, from one another once you are agreed, that life is only life forevermore, together wing to wing and oar to oar."

"I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain."

"Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second."

"INTO MY OWNOne of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew- Only more sure of all I thought was true."