There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife — a tyrannical midwife. - Stephen Spender

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truthfully about it would probably cause much pain to people close to me — and I always feel that the feelings of the living are more important than the monuments of the dead.

After the first powerful plain manifesto The black statement of pistons, without more fuss But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.