Wallowing in this bloody sty, I cast for fish that pleased my eye

If youth is a defect, it is one we outgrow too soon.

In the end, there is no end.

We feel the machine slipping from our hands As if someone else were steering; If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming train.

The world is absolutely out of control now and is not going to be saved by any reason or unreason.

Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat.

It is night, And it is vanity, and age Blackens the heart of Adam. Fear, The yellow chirper, beaks its cage.

History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had - it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes.

Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did.

I was overcome with an attack of pathological enthusiasm.

Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.

Live as though you will lose your power of love and attraction at any moment.

There will be something anguish or elation that is peculiar to this day alone. I rise from sleep and say: Hail to the morning! Come down to me my beautiful unknown.

I find great lighting and a squint of the eyes makes anyone look better.

If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.

Because I was aspirational, I did my work, I was respectful to my teachers, I experienced a lot of bullying from the black kids. My friends were largely white or Asian.

Feeble and timid minds . . . consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as the most admirable efforts of consummate prudence.

All publicity works upon anxiety.

A film should be like a rock in the shoe.

Beauty is a natural superiority.