Virtually every beginning poet hurts himself by an addiction to adjectives. Verbs are by far the most important things for poems-especially wonderful tough monosyllables like "gasp" and "cry." Nouns are the next most important. Adjectives tend to be useless.

If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.

Words seem like drops of water in a stream that has its own wholeness and its own motion.

Every now and then I meet someone certain of personal greatness. I want to pat this person on the shoulder and mutter comforting words: "Things will get better! You won't always feel so depressed! Cheer up!"

Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine.

You think that their dying is the worst thing that could happen. Then they stay dead.

In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty's torch. In football you run over somebody's face.