A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

That so much of our experience, or the stereotype which passes for it should be dealt with by means of the short story is perhaps a symptom not unnoticeable elsewhere in the public domain of an unlovely cynicism about human character.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.

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.

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

We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.