His eldest sister (who modestly prefers to be identified here as a Tuckahoe homemaker) has asked me to describe him as looking like 'the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at the roulette table at Monte Carlo.

And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.

Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles.

That's something that annoys the hell out of me-I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't.

Give me an honest con man any day.

After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances…I may be an orange peel.

You can't argue with someone who believes, or just passionately suspects, that the poet's function is not to write what he must write but, rather, to write what he would write if his life depended on his taking responsibility for writing what he must in a style designed to shut out as few of his old librarians as humanly possible.