Praise Will Lead You To Vanity, And

Something Has Been Said For Sobriety But Very Little.

I Think That What Happens In My Poetic Work In The Future Will Depend On My Being Knocked In The Face, And Thrown Flat, And Given Cancer, And All Kinds Of Other Things Short Of Senile Dementia.

We Have Reason To Be Afraid. This Is A Terrible Place.

I Didn't Want To Be Like Yeats; I Wanted To Be Yeats.

I Do Strongly Feel That Among The Greatest Pieces Of Luck For High Achievement Is Ordeal. Certain Great Artists Can Make Out Without It, Titian And Others, But Mostly You Need Ordeal. My Idea Is This: The Artist Is Extremely Lucky Who Is Presented With The Worst Possible Ordeal Which Will Not Actually Kill Him. At That Point, He's In Business: Beethoven's Deafness, Goya's Deafness, Milton's Blindness, That Kind Of Thing.