One of the most puzzling things about a novel is that “the way it really was” half the time is, and half the time isn’t, the way it ought to be in th… - Randall Jarrell

People always ask: For whom does the poet write? He needs only to answer, For whom do you do good? Are you kind to your daughter because in the end someone will pay you for being?... The poet writes his poem for its own sake, for the sake of that order of things in which the poem takes the place that has awaited it.

...our quarrels with the world are like our quarrels with God: no matter how right we are, we are wrong.

Death and the devil, what are these to him? His being accuses him — and yet his face is firm In resolution, in absolute persistence; The folds of smiling do for steadiness; The face is its own fate — a man does what he must — And the body underneath it says: I am.