"It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity o…"

"I have a strong inclination to be a poet."

"Of course, that he is a poetical phenomenon, as entirely without fault, as is the luxurious paper upon which his poems are invariably borne to the public eye."

"It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneli…"

"I have a profound conviction that the world is a species of gigantic jest—a jest of the most elaborate and stupendous—of the most complicated and august—and of the most utterly incomprehensible charac…"