Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.

To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.

For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.

Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse

The real biographies of poets are like those of birds, almost identical - their data are in the way they sound. A poet's biography lies in his twists of language, in his meters, rhymes, and metaphors.