Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

In democracy both a deep reverence and a sense of the comic are requisite.

Such a Big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

Poetry is a shuffling of boxes of illusions buckled with a strap of facts.