I have gotten so used to melancholia that I greet it like an old friend.

We’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.

When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.

It was like a church in there as only the truly lost sit in bars on Tuesday mornings at 8:00 a.m.

It was like any other relationship, there was jealousy on both sides, there were split-ups and reconciliations. There were also fragmented moments of great peace and beauty. I often tried to get away from her and she tried to get away from me but it was difficult: Cupid, in his strange way, was really there.

It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.

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.