One thing is certain, and I have always known it - the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about

What can I have that I still want?

Without anxiety life would have very little savor.

Absence becomes the greatest Presence.

Family life! The United Nations is child's play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family.

a poet never feels useful.

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