The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?

On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?

I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

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.

Things take the time they take. Don't worry.

The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.