I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn - Robert Frost

It looked as if a night of dark intent was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage...

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.