It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

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.

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

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.

Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.

The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.

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.