Randall Jarrell

“The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.”

“A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”

“From my mother's sleep I fell into the State.”

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

“The ways we miss our lives are life.”

“About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.”

“Pain comes from the darkness and we call it wisdom. It is pain.”

“Read at the level of your reader.”

“If I could have my life over again, I'd be a machine.”

“The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons learned from the body.”

“Art, being bartender, is never drunk.”

“If you have a sapling in your hand, and someone tells you the Messiah has come, first plant the sapling and then go to greet the Messiah.”