"No good poem, however confessional it may..." - Quote by C S Lewis

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place [if we anticipate and look for it, rather than wallow in our 'supposed loss'. It can be helpful to think of the loss of that blessing as simply necessary to make way for another different blessing].”

“Only the skilled can judge the skillfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.”

“Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”

“We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.”

“The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.”

“A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.”

“I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments - the head on one canvas and the bust on another.”

“For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.”

“If you approach a film with the feeling that you are going to have some impact on society then you're liable to get carried away with yourself. Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, "Clint, you must remember, it's only a movie.”