This infantile sense of order tended to infect my life at large. Up at 5:30 a.m., coffee, oatmeal, perhaps sausage (homemade), and fresh eggs giving one of the yolks to Lola. Listening to NPR and grieving more recently over the absence of Bob Edwards who was the sound of morning as surely as birds. Reading a paragraph or two of Emerson or Loren Eiseley to raise the level of my thinking. Going out to feed the cattle if it was during our six months of bad weather.

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

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

Nothing on my trip thus far was as I expected which shows you that rather than simply read about the United States you have to log the journey.

That is simply the most beautiful publishing office in the world, with that cranky old building in that wonderful park.

I had let my digust with teaching ruin my love of literature.

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