Poetry forces a writer to condense and crystallise his thoughts and often represents a short cut to truths unsuspected by the author himself.

America is not the center of the universe.

I hear poets complaining: 'We face what our forebears did not face. We face TV. We face radio. We face this and that.'

Money is color-blind, race-blind, sex-blind, degree-blind, and couldn't care less who brought you up or in what circumstances.

If the influence of luck is a delusion, then all I can say is that the delusion is virtually universal.

I've been busy for years, buying land, often under pseudonyms, and planting trees on it. All the money is going into it when I die.. and in the end I'd like to think that it will be 20 to 30,000 acres.

Everything I publish is for my readers.