People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love.

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.

Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head... it's only a matter of degree.