Frost in January minus 20 for a week. Dead birds frozen on the branch—they fall with the first thaw like ripe fruit—death-ripened. We shall all end like them—just a stain in the snow.

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.

Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique.

The effective in art is what rapes the emotions of your audience without nourishing its values.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you.

It is the duty of every patriot to hate his country creatively.