 I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen. |
| I'm either going to be a writer or a bum. |
| I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct. |
| When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on. |
| I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter. |
| I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it. |
| My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall. |
| Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time. |
| There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud. |
| I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. |
| I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way. |
| I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman. |
| Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes. |
| All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure. |
| I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie. |
| I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors. |
| You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget. |
| The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to. |
| Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. |
| Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering. |
