“If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”

“Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.”

“There are things I know I know about I don't write about, which I could not responsibly put into my books. Interestingly enough, though, the scariest one of those things is not classified at all. But nevertheless, I don't write about it, because it would make the world a somewhat more dangerous place.”

“I was seized with a strong desire to write poetry, so strong, in fact, that in imagination I thought I heard a voice crying in my ears –"Write! Write"I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself– "I know nothing about poetry."”

“When I originally started writing, I expected that probably very few people would read my poetry because in those days people didn’t read poetry much anyway.”

“don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.”

“I wanted to find out why Shelley could write better-sounding poetry than I.”

“We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.”

“I keep thinking about blood. I dream about it. Wake up thinking about it. Pretty soon I'll be writing morbid emo poetry about it.”

“This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit.”