the wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

It is the first experience you ever had of reading a decent poem: 'Oh, somebody else is lonely, too!

There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. Writers know that. I have never met a writer who does not crave to be alone. We have to be alone to do what we do.

In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?

A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.

Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet.

I remember I was a child, and when I grew up I was a poet. It all happened at sixty miles an hour and on days when the clock stopped and all of humanity fit into a little chapel, into a pinecone, a shot of ouzo, a snail's shell, a piece of soggy rye on the pavement.