Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.

Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.

Poetry can change the world, just like any art can change the world, by changing consciousness. Of course this was the great slogan of the nineteen sixites hippies’ revolution—enlarge the area of consciousness, which quite often was done by psychedelic means.

I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say 'whom I am constantly shocking

Western Civilization has been in a state of decline since the Edwardian age, say 1910. That was the height of Greco-Roman European civilization. Then there was the First World War. That was the beginning of the end. That civilization has been in a decline ever since. But from the American triumphalist point of view our wonderful electronic revolution is really the forefront of an ongoing wonderful civilization.

When you're young, everything seems like a romance. At 96, I can still feel romantic about publishing young unknown writers.

We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.