In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained. - Robert Graves

Most men — it is my experience — are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities.

Since the age of fifteen poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric.

A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.