Now every mortal has pain and sweat is constant, but if there is anything dearer than being alive, it's dark to me. We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth-- we call it life. We know no other. The underworld's a blank and all the rest just fantasy.

He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.

The self forms at the edge of desire, and a science of self arises in the effort to leave that self behind.

Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.

THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM [all snap flags] Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.

Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in.