I have never written a book that was not born out of a question I needed to answer for myself.

I suppose I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something.

each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.

I tell the gods are still alive / And they are not consoling.

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.

Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the least resources, especially with which to meet frustration.

I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love.