Robert Cecil Day Lewis

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

No good poem, however confessional is may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

- Robert Cecil Day Lewis