Stanley Kunitz

“The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.”

“The most difficult thing in the world is to be yourself.”

“Live in the layers, not on the litter.”

“We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment.”

“In a murderous time the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.”

“What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.”

“The poem is the record of a discovery.”

“I have to say that I've always believed perfection is death.”

“I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through it and see the world.”

“Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you've got to burn away all the peripherals.”

“The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn.”

“Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.”

“How many years of my life I have given to the task of tearing down the walls of my mind.”