Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.

I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.