...to think about:

"I like rereading books, too. I don't trust folk who don't reread. And those who read a lot of books. It seems crazy to me, this modern madness, and it'll only increase the number of pedants. You've got to read a few books well and frequently...What you've got to teach people is to read slowly. And not to fidget about so much." (Robert Frost, as quoted on p 3)

"Imaginary flowers which work on reality, instant bridges between men and things. Thus the poet makes the world habitable." (William Carlos Williams, as quoted on p 24)

"Because we have yet to discover the rules of something, we have no reason to doubt that there are rules." (Paz p 33)

"As Tomlinson puts it best: 'to reconcile the I that is with the I that I am.' In the nameless, impersonal I that is are fused the I that measures and the I that dreams, the I that thinks and the I that breathes, the I which creates and the I which destroys." (Paz p 35)

On Jean-Paul Sarte: "I believe he was not a good traveler: he had too many opinions." (Paz p 40)

On Dostoevski's characters: "...men, women, and children who are at once commonplace and prodigious...saints and criminals, idiots, and geniuses, women pious as a glass of water, and children who are angels tormented by their parents...a world of criminals and just men: for both the gates of the kingdom of heaven are open. All can save or lose themselves." (Paz p 97)

On Dostoevski's themes: "As the soul was for medieval clergymen, conscience for the modern intellectual is a theater of war." (Paz p 99) ( )