Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
Part came from Lane, and part from D.H. Lawrence; Gide, though I didn't know it then, gave part. They taught me to express my deep abhorrence If I caught anyone preferring Art To Life and Love and being Pure-in-heart. I lived with crooks but seldom w...
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall; And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
He is the Way. Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness; You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures. He is the Truth. Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety; You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years. He is the Life...
The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach: The Ogre cannot master speech. About a subjugated plain, Among it's desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his...
The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
As readers, we remain in the nursery stage so long as we cannot distinguish between taste and judgment, so long, that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a book are two: this I like; this I don't like. For an adult reader, the possible v...
If you want romance, fuck a journalist.
I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and see our illusions die.
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance til...
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake;
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed y...
No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.
If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
