Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: do be my enemy for friendship's sake.
Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.
Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.
Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more.
Much of our lives involves the word “no. ” In school we are mostly told, “Don't do it this way. Do it that way. ” But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing.
Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate.
The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition.
A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
The ruins of time build mansions in eternity.
O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?
The good news is that going blind is not going to make you as unhappy as you think it will. The bad news is that winning the lottery will not make you as happy as you expect.