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

When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.

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

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

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.

Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.