To the west, the Pacific Ocean, which revulses me, for its vastness cannot be fitted into any box.

Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.

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

I think what distresses me most in my life is that I have so many ideas I consider exciting ideas that I will never live to execute because it takes me so long to execute.

Art originates in play - in improvisation, experiment, and fantasy; it remains forever, in its deepest instincts, playful and spontaneous, an exercise of the imagination analogous to the exercising of the physical body to no purpose other than ecstatic release.

Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.

To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.