Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.

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

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don't get you then the whiskey must.

The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other.

I remember the Chillicothe ballplayers grappling the Long Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness. And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders of the Rock Island players were a yellow smoke against the sundown. And the umpire's voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpire's throat fought in the dust for a song.