That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.

That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.

There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.

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

Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out deserving individuals and bringing their work to the attention of many potential readers who might otherwise have been totally unaware of them.

Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.