poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

The only way through pain…is to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means. To close the door on pain is to miss the chance for growth.

For after all we make our faces as we go along.

... 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 simply adore being alone - I find it a consuming thirst - and when that thirst is slaked, then I am happy.

Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.

Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets -- they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.