It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life. – Randall Jarrell
One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. – Randall Jarrell
The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. – 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
If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren’t like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like. – 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
I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose. – Randall Jarrell
In the United States, there one feels free… Except from the Americans – but every pearl has its oyster. – Randall Jarrell
