“And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers…”

“I have learned more from Ezra Pound about writing than from anyone else.”

“I have been influenced by the Bible, Bach's music and contemporarily by Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams and Hopkins.”

“Gazzy: Captain, like the captain of a ship. And then Terror, you know, T-E-R-O-R.”

“concerning this selfstyled world's greatest and most generous literary figure: who had just arrived in our nation's capitol, attired in half a GI uniform and ready to be hanged as a traitor by the only country which ever made even a pretense of fighting for freedom of speech
Re Ezra Pound — poetry happens to be an art; and artists happen to be human beings.”

“The earth laughs in flowers.”

“Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.”

“(to Foaly) Captain Short's life is in danger, so push the button before I climb that tower and push it with your face!”

“I hold to no God," Roland said. "I hold to the Tower, and won't pray to that.”

“If they (children) smash, the flower vase assumes a smile
while turning into pieces.
For a chance to be spilled by their hands,
anything they hold gets spilled itself full of happiness.
For a chance to play with them,
water forgets about its own colourlessness.”