Anthony Hecht

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library. ”

Children know from a remarkably early age that things are being kept from them, that grown-ups participate in a world of mysteries. ”

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew. ”

Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs. ”

It doesn't seem to me strange that children should like the macabre, the sensational, and the forbidden. ”