Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

In the evenings there's been thunder, a distant bumping and stumbling, like God on a sullen binge.

The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighborhood children regard with derision and little awe; to let the hedges and weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust shut, to lie on my bed in some gown-shaped garment and let my hair lengthens and spread out over the pillow and my fingernails to sprout into claws, while candle wax drips onto the carpet. But long ago I made a choice between classicism and romanticism. I prefer to be upright and contained—an urn in daylight.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

The interesting thing about the religious component, for me, is that Jesus hardly mentions sex at all. He's pretty interested in the poor, he's pretty interested in selling your worldly goods and storing up riches in heaven. However, religious fundamentalists have made it all about sex, and that's like saying, "Look at the sex and we're just not going to talk about what you may be doing in a financial way that is sinful."

For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.