True power is given to the vulnerable.

I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.

For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been the reverberations after even the simplest conversation. But the deep collision is and has been with my unregenerate, tormenting and tormented self...I am unable to become what I see. I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful halt, "won't go".

Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.

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

I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.

I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.