I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.

Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.

One of the good elements of old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are.

...I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except when I'm making love. Two things when you forget time, when nothing exists except the moment--the moment of writing, the moment of love. That perfect concentration is bliss.

I suppose one has to remember that 'life' is important too, though it's something I forget in some moods, everything except work seeming like an interruption or really non-life.

True power is given to the vulnerable.

Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.