There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.

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

The problem with being passionately in love ... is that it deprives you of too much sleep.

Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.

It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another.

The love of violence is an aspect of our humanity. Even the weak wish to be strong primarily so they can wield the whip.

You have to live to really know things, my love