Each heart has its graveyard, each household its dead, And knells ring around us wherever we tread, And the feet that awhile made our pathway so bright Pass on to a land that is out of our sight.

Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos.

No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.

The beauty of that June day was almost staggering. After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.

Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.

Lovemaking seems all too absurd when described.