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

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.

The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.

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

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.

Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.