... 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.

In the country of pain we are each alone.

... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get the two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.

A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.

Mountains define you. You cannot define / Them.

When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.