Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

- Anthony Hecht

Children know from a remarkably early age that things are being kept from them, that grown-ups participate in a world of mysteries.

- Anthony Hecht

It doesnt seem to me strange that children should like the macabre, the sensational, and the forbidden.

- Anthony Hecht

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

- Anthony Hecht

I'm filled with admiration, delight, and gratitude at discovering James Lasdun's poems in A Jump Start. He has wit, speed, intelligence, a keen eye, …

- Anthony Hecht

I look and look, / As though I could be saved simply by looking

- Anthony Hecht

Brilliant. [Lasdun] seems to me certainly among the most gifted, vivid, and deft poets now writing in English, and far better than many who are more …

- Anthony Hecht

A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass …

- Anthony Hecht

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew.

- Anthony Hecht