All that we are and all that we've ever felt, words have felt it first.

Life's essential length is only a few pages long, as succinct as a line of verse and as brief as the title of a poem.

Love grows by not giving to us. And if our passion for poetry lives on and persists, it is because poetry offers us only its bits of lint.

If anything needs love it is reality, for it is reality that lacks it the most - I doubt that it was ever loved.

What I try to do is to keep emotion on a tight leash; otherwise, it can never be transubstantiated into poetry.

Poetry relishes ripe fruit - but ripe is one thing and overripe quite another. That's something poetry doesn't like, so it couldn't care less if I were to fall overripe to the ground.

I don't aspire, but I would be very happy if one of my poems suddenly offered someone a shady rest stop, a breather in our interminable march under the murderous, scorching heat of the superfluous.