It is no use thinking that writing of poems - the actual writing - can accommodate itself to a social setting, even the most sympathetic social setting of a workshop composed of friends. It cannot. The work improves there and often the will to work gets valuable nourishment and ideas. But, for good reasons, the poem requires of the writer not society or instruction, but a patch of profound and unbroken solitude.

I simply do not distinguish between work and play.

I saw that worrying had come to nothing and gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.

If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.

Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

Things take the time they take. don't worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?

I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.