Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.

The scissors cut the long-grown hair; The razor scrapes the remnant fuzz. Small-jawed, weak-chinned, big-eyed, I stare At the forgotten boy I was.

Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.

To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.