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.

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

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.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

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

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.