Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .

I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.

It’s never quite right, all the things we are taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we die, all the lives we live.

A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class

we had such tremendous fun and much agony together for some years

The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.