Fact is not truth, but a poet who willfully defies fact cannot achieve truth.

I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.

A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and - if he is lucky enough - know the love of an honest woman.