I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.

Every sentence he manages to utter scatters its component parts like pond water from a verb chasing its own tail.

This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem.

I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them.

Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.

Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.