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

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

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

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.