The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.

Who cares about a kid from the Midwest writing pentameter? It's stupid.

In Eden who sleeps happiest? The serpent.

The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island.

The classics can console. But not enough.

I look in the mirror. There's me. What's in the mirror is not real. So am I unreal?

I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work, I study the stars.