Freedom is baffling: men having it often know not they have it till it is gone and they no longer have it.

There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.

I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.

Poetry is the arithmetic of the easiest way and the primrose path, matched up with foam-flanked horses, bloody knuckles, and bones, on the hard ways to the stars.

Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly.

God, let me remember all good losers.

The impact of television on our culture is just indescribable.