I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.

i was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

In New York you've got to have all the luck.

Banion wondered which was worse - being sodomized by aliens, or having to sit through two hours of Charles Ives.

writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all

I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.