Most works of art are, necessarily, bad...; one suffers through the many for the few. - Randall Jarrell

If my tone is mocking, the tone of someone accustomed to helplessness, this is natural: the poet is a condemned man for whom the State will not even buy breakfast — and as someone said, “If you’re going to hang me, you mustn’t expect to be able to intimidate me into sparing your feelings during the execution.”

One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

...habits are happiness of a sort...