The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found - the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it.

I am learning by the week, but my poesy is still not my own. New rhyme, new me me me in words. I am not all this carven rhetoric.

Things are symbols of themselves.

Recent history is the record of one vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind.

So I had a choice between going to a jail or going to a bughouse like a nice young middle-class student. So I chose to go to a very polite mental hospital. When I left eight months later, they said, 'You were never psychotic. You were just an average neurotic.'

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.

Affection is the most important thing. And the quality of affection - with your friends, your lovers, your family. But particularly for your own generation.