It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?

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.

Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.

I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.

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

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

God, let me remember all good losers.