If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Métro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.

A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless.

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.

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

The fact is that I have lived with the belief that power, any kind of power, was the one thing forbidden to poets. ... Power requires that the inner person never be unmasked. No, we poets have to go naked. And since this is so, it is better that we stay private people; a naked public person would be rather ridiculous, what?

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

Being very rich as far as I am concerned is having a margin. The margin is being able to give.