Never write prose when you can write poetry.

Don't send a poet to London.

Avoid this crowd like the plague. And if they quote you, make damn sure they heard you.

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed.

My lord father used to say a man should never draw his sword unless he means to use it.

Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.

I'd never recited poetry to anyone before; I've never done it since. I have a highly sensitive, built-in fuse mechanism that keeps me from opening up too far, from revealing my feelings, and reciting poetry makes me feel as though I'm talking about my feelings and standing on one leg at the same time.

You must not take out your sword because if you try to kill someone, you must die for it yourself. What you must do instead is kill yourself, kill your own mind.

No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down — impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

How poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, “Since you won’t read me, I’ll make sure you can’t” — is one of the most complicated and interesting of stories.

Do not by any means allow yourself to open both ears to the slanderers and to draw your conclusions and decisions on the basis of what they alone have to say, and thereby judge the case in absentia without the presence of the person slandered to defend himself.

...how poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, “Since you won’t read me, I’ll make sure you can’t” — is one of the most complicated and interesting of stories.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it . . .