For to be desperate is to discover strength. / We die of comfort and by conflict live.

Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.

a poet never feels useful.

I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.

Pain can make a whole winter bright, like fever, force us to live deep and hard.

No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.

in the very long run any success devours - and perhaps also corrupts.