Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and can lead to wars.

Time seems to me a drift, a shifting of sand. And my mind is shifting with it. I am wearing away.

Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own.

There are moments when I cannot bear this unremitting consciousness. It knows only itself. Awake, I am in a continuum with my dreams. I feel my typewriters, my table, my chair to have that assurance of a solid world, where things take up space, where is not the endless emptiness of insubstantial thought that leads to nowhere but itself. My memories pale as I prevail upon them again and again. They become more and more ghostly. I fear nothing so much as losing them altogether and having only my blank endless mind to live in.

Poems have ideas. The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.