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

Look out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you calling. Look out how you use proud words.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.

I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.