But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.

I don't think it's a question of whether you eat meat. It's a question of what kind of meat, and where it comes from.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.

These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency.

I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.