“Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”

“The mind I love must have wild places.”

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”

“Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.”

“Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.”

“The priority for the poet must be his poetry, the poetry must determine his agenda and deadlines”

“No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.”

“Poetry, perhaps the finest of fine arts, certainly the shynest and most elusive?, poetry which must have listeners, which cannot sing into a void.”

“The likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilisation will have advanced beyond all recognition – into colonies in outer space, for instance. In either case, evolutionary extrapolations from present conditions are likely to be highly misleading.”

“Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.”