Louise Bogan

“Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.”

“No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be a square.”

“The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?”

“But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.”

“In the country whereto I goI shall not see the face of my friendNor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses;Together we shall not findThe land on whose hills bends the new moonIn air traversed of birds.What have I thought of love?I have said, "It is beauty and sorrow."I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendorAs a wind out of old time . . .But there is only the evening here,And the sound of willowsNow and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water.-- from "Betrothed”

“Come, drunks and drug-takers; come perverts unnerved!Receive the laurel, given, though late, on merit; to whom and wherever deserved.Parochial punks, trimmers, nice people, joiners true-blue,Get the hell out of the way of the laurel. It is deathless And it isn't for you.”

“Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.”

“Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.”

“Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.”

“The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.”