After a couple of years of public high school, I went to Exeter - an insane conglomeration of adolescent males in the wilderness, all of whom claimed to hate poetry.

— Donald Hall

As Henry Moore carved or modelled his sculpture every day, he strove to surpass Donatello4. And failed, but woke the next morning elated for another try.

— Donald Hall

As I grew older - collapsing into my seventies, glimpsing ahead the cliffs of the eighties, colliding into eighty-five - poetry abandoned me.

— Donald Hall

Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems.

— Donald Hall

Every afternoon, I shut the door of my bedroom to write: Poetry was secret, dangerous, wicked and delicious.

— Donald Hall

Everything important always begins from something trivial.

— Donald Hall

For better or worse, poetry is my life.

— Donald Hall

I have seen so many poets who were famous, who won all sorts of prizes, disappear with their death. I write as good as I can and don't try to turn that into some hope for a future that I could never know.

— Donald Hall

I have written some poetry and two prose books about baseball, but if I had been a rich man, I probably would not have written many of the magazine essays that I have had to do. But, needing to write magazine essays to support myself, I looked to things that I cared about and wanted to write about, and certainly baseball was one of them.

— Donald Hall

I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it.

— Donald Hall