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.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.

Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.