“ There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this. Randall Jarrell
“ The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Randall Jarrell
“ A good poet is someone who manages in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms to be struck by lightning five or six times. Randall Jarrell
“ I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry. Randall Jarrell
“ The dark uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed. Randall Jarrell
“ One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. Randall Jarrell
“ More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader and would no more read a book alone if they could help it than have a baby alone. Randall Jarrell
“ From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I… Randall Jarrell
“ A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times. Randall Jarrell
“ The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)He mewed until I heard him in the hous… Randall Jarrell
“ Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. This is an appealing sentence that, so far as I can see, is not true about a few pictures and statues a… Randall Jarrell
“ When I was young and miserable and prettyAnd poor, I'd wishWhat all girls wish: to have a husband,A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wishIs womanish:That the boy putting groceries in my carSee… Randall Jarrell
“ I see at last that all the knowledgeI wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkn… Randall Jarrell
