“Nothing is a masterpiece – a real masterpiece – till it’s about two hundred years old. A picture is like a tree or a church, you’ve got to let it grow into a masterpiece. Same with a poem or a new religion. They begin as a lot of funny words. Nobody knows whether they’re all nonsense or a gift from heaven. And the only people who think anything of ’em are a lot of cranks or crackpots, or poor devils who don’t know enough to know anything. Look at Christianity. Just a lot of floating seeds to start with, all sorts of seeds. It was a long time before one of them grew into a tree big enough to kill the rest and keep the rain off. And it’s only when the tree has been cut into planks and built into a house and the house has got pretty old and about fifty generations of ordinary lumpheads who don’t know a work of art from a public convenience, have been knocking nails in the kitchen beams to hang hams on, and screwing hooks in the walls for whips and guns and photographs and calendars and measuring the children on the window frames and chopping out a new cupboard under the stairs to keep the cheese and murdering their wives in the back room and burying them under the cellar flags, that it begins even to feel like a religion. And when the whole place is full of dry rot and ghosts and old bones and the shelves are breaking down with old wormy books that no one could read if they tried, and the attic floors are bulging through the servants’ ceilings with old trunks and top-boots and gasoliers and dressmaker’s dummies and ball frocks and dolls-houses and pony saddles and blunderbusses and parrot cages and uniforms and love letters and jugs without handles and bridal pots decorated with forget-me-nots and a piece out at the bottom, that it grows into a real old faith, a masterpiece which people can really get something out of, each for himself. And then, of course, everybody keeps on saying that it ought to be pulled down at once, because it’s an insanitary nuisance.”

“I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own.”

“One of poetry’s great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music and image — things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why — is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective.”Staying Human: Poetry in the Age of Technology”

“The world you are in –Is the true hell.The journey to Truth itselfIs what quickens the heart to become lighter.The lighter the heart, the purer it is.The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.And the heavier the heart,The more chained to this hellIt will remain.”

“Songs live longer than kingdoms. ”

“When it comes to love we are primates breaking stickswhile pointing to our hearts.”

“Poetry, is a life long war wagedagainst ineffable beauty.”

“I LIVE MY LIFESO HAPPILY IN CRAZY WITH HER.”

“She was cool— the whole world seemed to spin around her in smooth jazz.”

“Break my heart and you will find yourself inside. ”

“She was too busy wishing on shooting stars to see the dreams come true around her.”

“Drugs to mehave always beena pretty girl with a sly smilebeckoning mewith a finger down the dark path of a fork in the road.”

“One day I’ll paint the perfect sunset– if I can only find the words.”