Literary Selection Quotes

making final judgements about poets, cities or regions on the basis of an anthology is always dangerous: anthologies are mirages created, finally, by their editors.

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

Literature, like memory, selects only the vivid patches.

There is usually no dreamer so unworldly as the anthologist. He wanders in a vast garden, lost in wonder, unable to decide often between flowers of equal loveliness. ... The true anthologist has the greatest difficulty in finishing his book. There is always just one more, a new, delicious discovery.

We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

A book of poems doesn't just come out by chance, an editor has to select it, a publisher has to distribute it or you will never see it.