I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.

History is where tensions were.

Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.

When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.

Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.