Our Quarrels With The World

A Poet Is A Man Who Manages, In A Lifetime Of Standing Out In Thunderstorms, To Be Struck By Lightning Five Or Six Times.

Most Poets, Most Good Poets Even, No Longer Have The Heart To Write About What Is Most Terrible In The World Of The Present: The Bombs Waiting Beside The Rockets, The Hundreds Of Millions Staring Into The Temporary Shelter Of Their Television Sets, The Decline Of The West That Seems Less A Decline Than The Fall Preceding An Explosion.

Is An Institution Always A Man's Shadow Shortened In The Sun, The Lowest Common Denominator Of Everybody In It?

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 The Novel.

Early In His Life Mr. [ezra] Pound Met With Strong, Continued, And Unintelligent Opposition. If People Keep Opposing You When You Are Right, You Think Them Fools; And After A Time, Right Or Wrong, You Think Them Fools Simply Because They Oppose You. Similarly, You Write True Things Or Good Things, And End By Thinking Things True Or Good Simply Because You Write Them