Louis MacNeice

My stepmother appeared when I was about 9. My brother was sent off to an institute in Scotland & my sister & I were sent to school. As my stepmother's ideas were then wholly Quaker, mixed with a naive & charming innocence & a little snobbery, it was one dotty epoch on top of another. I always remained terrified of my father.

I do not envy any animal, though I envy many of their capacities.

You can't express emotion without giving information.

The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm.

The poet is a specialist in something which everyone practises. Herein, poetry differs from the other arts. Everyone does not practise music or painting or even dancing, but everyone without exception puts together words poetically every day of his life.

Style without content is bad style.