A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.

Simplicity is always a virtue.

Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.

Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.

The rebel is doomed to a violent death. The rest of us can look forward to sedated expiration in a coma inside an oxygen tent, with tubes inserted in every bodily orifice.

I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.

I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick, dense, intense, complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood sweat; blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it.