No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.

I have been thinking about the girl I met last night in the mirror: dark on the marble-ivory white: glossy black hair: deep suspiring eyes in which one's glances sink because they are nervous, curious, turned to sexual curiosity.

The artist's work constitutes the only satisfactory relationship he can have with his fellow men since he seeks his real friends among the dead and the unborn.

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.

To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off.

There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it.

I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter un-answered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?