The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.

A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

Loneliness is a strange gift.

When snow accumulates week after week, month after month, it works curious miracles.

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.

An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.