I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises.
The only thing that exists is torment, lyricism, and the magnificence of language.
Many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed.
I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.
Words are like gems to me... imagine yourself walking through a very shallow stream and picking up beautiful stones that catch your eye... that's what names are like for me.
I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own.
The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world.
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.
Prose is like hair; it shines with combing.
The heaven of poetry and romance still lies around us and within us.
A poet is a verb that blossoms light in gardens of dawn, or sometimes midnight.
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
All the world can be found in poetry. All you need to see and hear. All the moments, good and bad, joyous and sad.
