“The voice of the present, if it is to be known, must be caught at the risk of speaking in idioms and circumlocutions sometimes shocking to the scholar and historians of logic.” Arguing that new experience may require unconventional and unsettling language · General Aims and Theories, 1925 Art Poetry Truth
“It is part of a poet's business to risk not only criticism but folly in the conquest of consciousness.” Defending artistic risk as necessary to enlarging perception and expression · General Aims and Theories, 1925 Art Poetry Truth
“Language has built towers and bridges, but itself is inevitably as fluid as always.” Recognising both the constructive power and continual changeability of language · General Aims and Theories, 1925 Art Poetry
“New conditions of life germinate new forms of spiritual articulation.” Suggesting that changing experience naturally creates new forms of expression · General Aims and Theories, 1925 Art Faith Time
“I put no particular value on the simple objective of modernity.” Arguing that artistic value matters more than merely appearing contemporary · General Aims and Theories, 1925 Art Time
“The deliberate program, then, of a "break" with the past or tradition seems to me to be a sentimental fallacy.” Rejecting the idea that modern art must sever itself from artistic tradition · General Aims and Theories, 1925 Art Time
“What I am after is an assimilation of this experience, a more organic panorama, showing the continuous and living evidence of the past in the inmost vital substance of the present.” Explaining his desire to make history live organically within the present · Letter to Otto H. Kahn, 12 September 1927 Art Memory Time
“The very idea of a bridge, of course, is a form peculiarly dependent on such spiritual convictions. It is an act of faith besides being a communication.” Defining the bridge as both connection and an emblem of spiritual belief · Letter to Waldo Frank, 20 June 1926 Art Faith
“Suffering is a real purification, and the worst thing I have always had to say against Christian Science is that it wilfully avoided suffering.” Reflecting on suffering as an element in emotional and spiritual understanding · Letter to his mother, 21 December 1923 Despair Faith Hope
“I have seen the Word made Flesh. I mean nothing less, and I know now that there is such a thing as indestructibility.” Describing love as a profound experience of spiritual and physical unity · Letter to Waldo Frank, 21 April 1924 Faith Joy Love
“The great thing is to Live and NOT Hate.” A compact affirmation of life and resistance to bitterness · Letter to his mother, 23 March 1924 Hope Love
“I only ask to leave behind me something that the future may find valuable, and it takes a bit of sacrifice sometimes in order to give the thing that you know is in yourself and worth giving.” Expressing his willingness to sacrifice security for enduring artistic work · Letter to his father, 12 January 1924 Art Fame Time
“One can live happily on very little, I have found, if the mind and spirit have some definite objective in view.” Finding contentment through purpose rather than material comfort · Letter to his mother, 21 December 1923 Hope Joy
“When they come, they come as things in themselves; it is a matter of felicitous juggling; and no amount of will or emotion can help the thing a bit.” Describing the mysterious arrival and arrangement of the right words · Letter to Gorham Munson, 26 November 1921 Art Poetry
“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked with them to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.” On the deep immersion in language required before poetic expression becomes instinctive · Letter to Gorham Munson, 26 November 1921 Art Poetry
“The poet is the priest of the imagination.” A widely circulated attribution to Crane, but the exact wording and source are not consistently documented · Essay, General Aims and Theories Art Faith Poetry
“The new conditions of life demand a new form of poetry.” Arguing that poetic language must respond to modernity · Essay, General Aims and Theories Poetry Time
“The imagination, intoxicated by experience, must find its own forms.” Linking artistic form with the transforming power of experience · Essay, General Aims and Theories Art Poetry
“The poet must be a seer, and not merely a recorder.” Defining poetry as visionary rather than documentary · Essay, General Aims and Theories Poetry Truth
“The poet today is faced with a condition of life which is unparalleled in history.” Recognising the unprecedented pressures confronting modern poetry · Essay, General Aims and Theories Poetry Time
