"Being by the nature of my upbringing, all my energies having been directed to one channel of activity, crippled from other activities and made helpless even to live."
"I am determined that this war, with all its powers for devastation, shall not master my poeting; that is, if I am lucky enough to come through all right."
"I can only say that one's individual situation is more real and important to oneself than the devastations of fates and empires especially when they do not vitally affect oneself."
"I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do."
"I despair of ever writing excellent poetry."
"I don't think I knew what real poetry was till I read Keats a couple of years ago."
"I never joined the army for patriotic reasons."
"I wanted to write a battle song for the Judeans but so far I can think of nothing noble and weighty enough."
"I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on."
"It is true I have not been killed or crippled, been a loser in the stocks, or had to forswear my fatherland, but I have not quite gone free and have a right to say something."
"It's really my being lucky enough to bag an inch of candle that incites me to this pitch of punctual epistolary. I must measure my letter by the light."
"My mind is so cramped and dulled and fevered, there is no consistency of purpose, no oneness of aim; the very fibres are torn apart, and application deadened by the fiendish persistence of the coil of circumstance."
"Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way."
"Nothing can justify war."
"Poetical appreciation is only newly bursting on me."
"You mustn't forget the circumstances I have been brought up in, the little education I have had."
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