“Letters, I maintain, between the intervals of removing a half-chewed cigar from my pocket to my mouth, should always be egotistical.” A playful defence of the personal and self-revealing nature of letter writing · Letter, collected correspondence Art Truth
“God is the country of the spirit, and each of us is given a little holding of ground in that country.” Using the language of landscape to describe an intensely personal conception of the spiritual life · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson Faith Nature
“Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle.” Defining poetry through its immediate physical and emotional effect on the listener · Recorded talk, A Few Words of a Kind, 1952 Art Joy Poetry
“I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words.” His simplest and most enduring explanation of why he became a poet · Poetic Manifesto, 1951 Art Love Poetry
“I’m sick of my always hurdygurdying these little griefs out and me like a monkey on the top of it all with my beggar’s cap.” A painfully comic expression of weariness with his own troubles and dependence on patrons · Letter to Princess Marguerite Caetani, 1951 Despair Truth
“Cold beer is bottled God.” A famously compact piece of comic praise written during intense Mediterranean heat · Letter to Margaret Taylor, 3 August 1947 Joy
“The heat! It comes round corners at you like an animal with windmill arms.” Transforming physical discomfort into an exuberantly comic image · Letter to Margaret Taylor, 3 August 1947 Art Nature
“War can’t produce poetry.” A stark judgement on the destructive relationship between warfare and artistic creation · Letter to Oscar Williams, 30 July 1945 Poetry War
“It’s got, I think, a lovely slow lyrical movement.” Showing Thomas listening critically to the movement and music of his own verse · Letter to Vernon Watkins, 30 August 1944 Art Music Poetry
“I’ve been sitting down trying to write a poem about a man who fished with a woman for bait and caught a horrible collection.” A vivid glimpse of the strange imaginative premises from which his poems could develop · Letter to John Davenport, 8 January 1941 Art Poetry
“Just silence. That’s what Goebbels has done for me. I get nightmares like invasions, all successful.” Showing how the threat of invasion entered even his dreams · Letter to Vernon Watkins, September 1940 Despair War
“In this house Caitlin and I have our bedroom on the top floor, and so far we haven’t got up even when the German machines are over us like starlings.” Meeting the danger of wartime air raids with characteristic dark humour · Letter to Vernon Watkins, 1940 Love War
“I’ve been busy over stories, pot-boiling stories for a book, semi-autobiographical, to be finished by Christmas.” A candid description of the practical writing behind his autobiographical stories · Letter to Vernon Watkins, August 1939 Art Memory
“This war, trembling even on the edge of Laugharne, fills me with such horror and terror and lassitude.” Recording his dread as Europe moved towards war · Letter to Vernon Watkins, 25 August 1939 Despair War
“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation.” Describing poetry as an attempt to reconcile conflicting forces within himself · Letter to Henry Treece, 16 May 1938 Poetry Truth
“I can give you a very rough idea of the ‘plot’, because the ‘plot’ is told in images, & the images are what they say, not what they stand for.” Insisting that poetic images possess meaning in themselves rather than merely representing ideas · Letter to Hermann Peschmann, 1 February 1938 Art Poetry Truth
“I don’t want you for a day: a day is the length of a gnat’s life: I want you for the lifetime of a big, mad animal, like an elephant.” An extravagant declaration of lasting romantic devotion · Letter to Caitlin Macnamara, December 1936 Love Time
“You’ll never, I’ll never let you, grow wise, and we’ll always be young and unwise together.” Turning romantic love into a pact to preserve youth and spontaneity · Letter to Caitlin Macnamara, probably late 1936 Childhood Joy Love
“The one thing that’s saving me, I mean, not from any melodramatic issues, but just from sheer unhappiness, is lots and lots of work.” Describing creative work as a defence against unhappiness · Letter to Vernon Watkins, 20 April 1936 Art Despair Hope
“I do really need hills around me before I can do my best with either stories or poems.” Acknowledging the creative importance of landscape and place · Letter to Bert Trick, 1935 Art Nature Poetry
“Convince people that a thing is bad, and they are ready to listen to a reasonable plan for its overthrow.” A youthful observation on persuasion and social change · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, 20 July 1934 Truth
“Apart from not being born at all, it is best to die young.” An early expression of the morbidity that repeatedly surfaced in his correspondence · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, May 1934 Death Despair Mortality
“Tell him I write of worms and corruption, because I like worms and corruption.” A mischievously defiant defence of his darker poetic preoccupations · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, May 1934 Death Mortality Poetry
“I’m a freak user of words, not a poet. That’s really the truth. No self-pity there.” Showing the severe self-doubt beneath his extraordinary command of language · Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, 9 May 1934 Despair Poetry Truth
