“My turn shall also come:I sense the spreading of a wing.”

“Where to start?Everything cracks and shakes,The air trembles with similes,No one world's better than another;the earth moans with metaphors.”

“Only in Russia poetry is respected--it gets people killed.”

“One cannot launch a new history the idea is altogether unthinkable; there would not be the continuity and tradition. Tradition cannot be contrived or learned. In its absence one has, at the best, ...”

“The Armenian language cannot be worn out; its boots are stone. Well, certainly, the thick-walled words, the layers of air in the semi-vowels.”

“The people need poetry that will be their own secretTo keep them awake forever,And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.”

“Im not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Ive seen a chunk of the universe, true, but theres still so much more to see. I doubt Ill ever cure t...”

“My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmonious...”

“Sometimes travel is merely an opportunity taken when you can.”

“In nothing is the difference between the Americans and the Soviets so marked as in the attitude, not only toward writers, but of writers toward their system. For in the Soviet Union the writer's jo...”

“Old stories sometimes slid out of her like lamp oil or light, stories containing details oblique and nearly incomprehensible to me or to anyone who has never known that world.”