"I'm not a symbolist. I'm a realist."

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down."

"The mind is a peculiar thing. It works in its own ways."

"I never ask of a pupil who has written a poem, 'What does it mean?' I always ask, 'How did you arrive at that?'"

"The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in a clarification of life—not necessarily a great clarification, such as Lowell or Emerson or Wordsworth might have given, but a momentary stay …"