As a kid I quite fancied the romantic Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment.

Is this not the true romantic feeling not to desire to escape life but to prevent life from escaping you.

The other inmates stand in a long straight line flanked by guards and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them because they will not run - will not try to escape.

Art and Religion are then two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.

It is a power stronger than will. Could a stone escape from the laws of gravity? Impossible. Impossible for evil to form an alliance with good.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?

Romance like a ghost escapes touching it is always where you are not not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time but it is poetry in the memory.

It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time be ceaselessly drunk. On wine on poetry or on virtue as you wish.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But of course only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.