Anthony Hecht Quotes

A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew.

If the heart has its reasons, perhaps the body
Has its own lumbering sort of carnal spirit,
Felt in the tingling bruises of collision,
And known to captains as esprit de corps.

I look and look, / As though I could be saved simply by looking

I had the gift, and arrived at the technique
That called up spirits from the vasty deep...

It doesn't seem to me strange that children should like the macabre, the sensational, and the forbidden.

Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs.

Brilliant. [Lasdun] seems to me certainly among the most gifted, vivid, and deft poets now writing in English, and far better than many who are more famous. His capacities are solidly established; his promise is nearly infinite.

Doctors of Science, what is man that he
Should hope to come to a good end?
The best is not to have been born.