"What is science? yard-measure and scale to philosophy, expert-accountant, bank clerk. What is poetry? miserable, ill-fed, underpaid, unionized labourer, pleased to oblige, grateful for work, flattering himself that poverty makes him an aristocrat."

"In the old romanticism the poem was an uncommon effect of common experience on the poet. All interest in the poem centred in this mysterious capacity of the poet for overfeeling, for being overaffected. In Poe the old romanticism ended and the new romanticism began. That is, the interest was broadened to include the reader: the end of the poem was pushed ahead a stage, from the poet to the reader. The uncommon effect of experience on the poet became merely incidental to the uncommon effect which he might have on the reader. Mystery was replaced by science; inspiration by psychology."

"Polygamy and polyandry distribute the frightening physical solidarity of monogamy. Monogamous couples are always hungry for company: to dilute sex."

"All literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express themselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the old how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents."

"Pseudo-modernists pursue individual style because they know they cannot make a name without it; but if they had lived in the eighteenth century their sole object would have been to write correctly, to conform to the manner of the period. In practice, their conforming individualism means an imitation, studiously concealed, of the eccentricities of poems which really are individual."

"When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation.... Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame."

"The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service."

"I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this loathing interest in me. Further than this, I know what they mean, I sympathize with them, I understand them. There should be a name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed; it is of the closest and more full of passion than incest."

"Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship."

"Politics have always covered two distinct kinds of problems: problems of administrative routine, and those that may be called 'questions of the moment.'... A question of the moment is, indeed, a substitute for some notion, such as the idea of God, or hereditary monarchy, or national glory, that has hitherto acted as a symbol of human co-ordination. It provides no new positive certainty to replace the discredited certainty, but is what the name implies: the raising of a question which the old certainty no longer answers."

"Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect."

"The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away."

"If the poem has no obvious destination, there's a chance that we'll be all setting off on an interesting ride."

"A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators."

"In Slaka, sex is just politics with the clothes off."

"The better class of Briton likes to send his children away to school until they're old and intelligent enough to come home again. Then they're too old and intelligent to want to."

"Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini."

"Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship."

"'The trouble is, it's hard to know you're little,' says Felicity. 'People like to make themselves matter.'"

"'I think, George,' says Merion, ' the trouble is that you don't have a conflict model of society.'"

"'It must be nice to think there is a true reality,' says Miss Callendar. 'I've always found reality a matter of great debate.'"

"'All action leads to suffering, someone else's, or one's own.'"

"Who ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My mother."

"'Oh, everybody exploits somebody,' says Howard, 'in this social order it's part of the human lot.'"

"'Look, Felicity,' says Howard, 'there's only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires.'"

"To you liberals, of course, goats are just sheep from broken homes."

"Well, yes, surely I think everybody ought to enjoy life as much as it's humanly possible because that's why we exist. I believe."

"We got a course in picknicking at the university," said Dr. Bourbon. "It's called Geology, but it's really picknicking."

"The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth."

"[A]nd the traffic noise that boomed in through the window was another reminder of what his spirit knew, that he was but a grain of sand in someone else's desert."

"Reading someone else's newspaper is like sleeping with someone else's wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it."

"My experience of ships is that on them one makes an interesting discovery about the world. One finds one can do without it completely."

"You see, you are an optimist and live on hope. I am a pessimist and live on experience."

"For God, who lives above the skies, Would look with vengeance in his eyes If I should ever dare despise My mother."

"Well," said Dr Jochum, "you are like all reformers. You like to reform the world because it is easier than trying to reform yourself."

"It had always seemed to Louis that a fundamental desire to take postal courses was being sublimated by other people into sexual activity."

"I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world."

"With sociology one can do anything and call it work."

"I've often thought that my scruples about stealing books were the only thing that stood in the way of my being a really great scholar."

"Jochum had said, "You keep asking the universe 'How ought I to live?' But it can't answer.""

"I thank the goodness and the grace Which on my birth have smiled, And made me in these Christian days, A happy English child."

"I love little pussy, her coat is so warm; And if I don't hurt her she'll do me no harm."

"People die. That’s true in novels, and it’s true in life. Dying is one of the very few things we all do. To deny or ignore the omnipresent reality of death seems to me a disservice to human beings. That said, acknowledging in my novels that death exists does not make me a murderer any more than acknowledging that cancer can be treated makes me an oncologist."

"(fills me with hope:) The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. I love the way John Green’s mind works. This book of essays traverses so many parts of our world—both elusive and quotidian—and demonstrates, ultimately, how remarkable it is to be human."

"I'm in love with cities I've never been to and people I've never met."

"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep; Slowly, and then all at once."

"The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives. I wondered if that was sort of the point of architecture."

"I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."

"That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt."