“The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear. The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.”

“I mean to indicate the reading of poetry not merely for the sensual ear, but for the mind's ear as well; yet the mind's ear can be trained only by the other, and the matter, practically considered, comes inescapably back to the reading of poetry aloud.”

“Take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be read, and my verse becomes all right.”

“I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.”

“The more you understand a poem and its complexities and depth, the more you will be able to do when reading it aloud.”

“Central also to reading verse aloud is the handling of enjambment,.. the interplay of line-end and sentence-flow.”

“My dear reader, read aloud, if possible! If you do so, allow me to thank you for it: if you not only do it yourself, if you also influence others to do it, allow me to thank each one of them, and you again and again!”

“Smiling, I cut across the quadrangle toward the commons. I felt better about life than I had in a very long time. We could do this, Lissa and me. We could do this together.”

“That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.”

“Even the street-sweeper is frequently more profoundly versed in subtle metaphysics and divine wisdom than the missionary sent to convert him.”