Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?

One writes not by will but by surrender.

We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.

Hate generalizes; love is particular.

Poetry is the inner life of a culture, its nervous system, its deepest way of imagining the world. A culture that ignores its poets, chokes off its nervous system and becomes mortally ill.

art is not advocacy and advocacy is not art.

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile.