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

We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it.

Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse.

I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them.

Not even the most devastating truth can be told; it must be evoked.

Henry James's later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indulgence, dictating to a secretary. The roaming garrulousness of ordinary speech is usually corrected when it's transcribed into written prose.

I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul.