How wonderful it was to love something without the compromise of language.

The wife picked out ceramic tile for floor covering, not realizing that cost was determined by square foot, not square yard like carpet. Thinking the price was plenty reasonable, she had an extra room of tile ordered for installation. When the bill arrived, it was staggering. She and her husband began a fight that continued all through the construction job. They ended up divorced, but not until she had broken every window.

One of the curious effects of a bad hangover is that you think you're wrong whether you are or not. Not wrong in particulars, but wrong in general, wrong about everything.

Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

I wonder, when a writer's blocked and doesn't have any resources to pull himself out of it, why doesn't he jump in his car and drive around the U.S.A.? I went last winter for seven thousand miles and it was lovely. Inexpensive, too.