We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone – its value is incontestable.

How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?

For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.

Death is just the last scene of the last act.

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.

The despairing soul is a rebel.