Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

Those running tights the young women wear now, so they look like spacewomen, raspberry red and electric green so tight they show every muscle right into the crack between the buttocks, what is the point of them? Display. Young animals need to display.

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.

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

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything

We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.