What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private.

Perhaps this very instant is your time.

The art of one period cannot be approached through the attitudes (emotional or intellectual) of another.

Up from the bronze, I saw Water without a flaw Rush to its rest in air Reach to its rest, and fall.

Women have no wilderness in them They are provident instead Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread.

It is through the acceptance of a variety of aethetic and intellectual points of view that a culture is given breadth and density.

But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. ... It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at.