One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

...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.

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation

It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!

One has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds?

I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.