I feel very happy to see the sun come up every day. I feel happy to be around. ... I like to take this day- any day-and go to town with it.

William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time.

Poetry is a hazardous occupation, very hazardous. There may be bad things in there inside you that maybe you can't handle.

So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.

To have guilt you've got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don't feel the guilt you ought to have. And that's what The Firebombing is about.

I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.

I once had the nerve to ask Picasso the question, 'What is art?' He answered, 'Art is a lie which makes us see the truth.