After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption. — Wallace Stevens

To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing.

To have nothing to say and to say it in a tragic manner is not the same thing as having something to say.

A poem should be a part of one's sense of life.