"When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself... That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitiude for the gift of life."
— Stanley Kunitz

"What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire."
— Stanley Kunitz

"The heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking
it is necessary to go through
dark and deeper dark
and not to turn "
— Stanley Kunitz (The Testing-Tree)