History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

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.

The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

I have a plot, but not much happens.

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.