We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, most representative, most universal... That was something I earned from Kerouac, which was that spontaneous writing could be embarrassing... The cure for that is to write the thing down which you will not publish and which you won't show people. To write secretly... so you can actually be free to say anything you want.

A poem is like a radio that can broadcast continuously for thousands of years.

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms, I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America.

Now I have enough money to travel wherever I want, but I haven't got the health.

I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying.