Sometimes One Succeeds, Sometimes One Fails.

Everyone Wants A Prodigy To Fail; It Makes Our Mediocrity More Bearable.

All That A Critic, As Critic, Can Give Poets Is The Deadly Encouragement That Never Ceases To Remind Them Of How Heavy Their Inheritance Is.

Unless You Have Read And Absorbed The Best That Can Be Read And Absorbed, You Will Not Think Clearly Or Well.

Real Reading Is A Lonely Activity.

People Cannot Stand The Saddest Truth I Know About The Very Nature Of Reading And Writing Imaginative Literature, Which Is That Poetry Does Not Teach Us How To Talk To Other People: It Teaches Us How To Talk To Ourselves. What I'm Desperately Trying To Do Is To Get Students To Talk To Themselves As Though They Are Indeed Themselves, And Not Someone Else.