Nobody stays special when they're old, Anna. That's what we have to learn.

gardening is a madness, a folly that does not go away with age. Quite the contrary.

Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know ... if one is honest.

It is dangerous it seems to me for a civilization when there is a complete abyss betewen people in general and the artists. Or is it always so? The poets who are most ardently on the people's side write in such a way that the people cannot see rhyme nor reason to their work.

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.

Mountains define you. You cannot define / Them.

True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root.