I don’t believe that a reviewer or a critic can really criticize well unless he can praise well.

Then you develop a kind of critical sense about what you write. You can tell when something is good, but it would be just as good in somebody else's work too. You want to hold out for those things only you can say.

We've always had a tradition in America of hounding our artists to death. Look at the list of our great artists, you see a continual history of defeat, frustration, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction. The best poets of my generation are all suicides.

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

The true feeling of sex is that of a deep intimacy, but above all of a deep complicity.

To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

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.