It is the place of renewal and of safety, where for a little while there will be no harm or attack and, while every sense is nourished, the soul rests.

The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.

I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there.

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

Excellence costs a great deal.

Though friendship is not quick to burn it is explosive stuff.

One of the good elements of old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are.