In my life, I've seen enormous increase in the consumption of poetry. When I was young, there were virtually no poetry readings.

— Donald Hall

It's almost relaxing to know I'll die fairly soon, as it's a comfort not to obsess about my next orgasm.

— Donald Hall

I've always felt that poetry was particularly erotic, more than prose was... I say that you read poems not with your eyes and not with your ears, but with your mouth. You taste it.

— Donald Hall

I was at Harvard with a bunch of poets, and that was very rare. They published a lot of books because there was an excitement after the war that translated into poetry.

— Donald Hall

I would work until I got stuck, and I would put it down and pick up something else. I might be able to take a 20-minute nap and get to work again. That way, I was able to work about 10 hours a day... It was important to me to work every day. I managed to work on Christmas day, just to be able to say I worked 365 days a year.

— Donald Hall

My parents were willing to let me follow my nose, do what I wanted to do, and they supported my interest in buying the books that I wanted for birthdays and Christmas, almost always poetry books.

— Donald Hall

Not everything in old age is grim. I haven't walked through an airport for years, and wheelchairs are the way to travel.

— Donald Hall

One day, of course, no one will remember what I remember.

— Donald Hall

[O]very the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.

— Donald Hall

Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems.

— Donald Hall