I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there.

For me a true poem is on the way when I begin to be haunted, when it seems as if I were being asked an inescapable question by an angel with whom I must wrestle to get at the answer.

... if one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep.... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

For to be desperate is to discover strength. / We die of comfort and by conflict live.

Lunches are just not good. They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning's work.