It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.
It is absurd to think that ...
Quotes from the same author
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of 30.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
