Stanley Kunitz

“The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“Be what you are. Give What is yours to give. Have Style. Dare.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“End with an image and don't explain.”
― Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

“We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.”
― Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

"It is out of the dailiness of life that one is driven into the deepest recesses of the self."

“You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“Forward my mail to Mars.”
― Stanley Kunitz, The Testing Tree

“I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer.’ It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.”
― Stanley Kunitz