Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

— Wallace Stevens

Consider the odd morphology of regret.

— Wallace Stevens

Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.

— Wallace Stevens

Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.

— Wallace Stevens

Desiring the exhilaration of changes: The motive for metaphor, shrinking from The weight of primary noon ...

— Wallace Stevens

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

— Wallace Stevens

For the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds /Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

— Wallace Stevens

From oriole to crow, note the decline In music. Crow is realist. But, then, Oriole, also, may be realist.

— Wallace Stevens

He heard her low accord, Half prayer and half ditty, And He felt a subtle quiver, That was not heavenly love, Or pity. This is not writing any book.

— Wallace Stevens

Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.

— Wallace Stevens