"It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it." - W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand

"Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry." - Georges Brague, quoted in The Times

"Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly." - T. S. Eliot

"Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music to the musician . . . - or else it is nothing, an empty, formalised bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, letter (1940)

"Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls." - Voltaire

"Love is the poetry of the senses." - Balzac, Honore de (1790-1850)

"I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all." - Nash, Ogden