Once I witnessed a windstorm so severe two 100-year-old trees were uprooted on the spot. The next day, walking among the wreckage, I found the friable nests of birds, completely intact and unharmed on the ground. That the featherweight survive the massive, that this reversal of fortune takes place among us — that is what haunts me. I don’t know what it means.

I remember being so young I thought all artists were famous.

My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it.

I hated childhood / I hate adulthood / And I love being alive.

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

Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event.

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