When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

I loved them all the way one loves at any age -- if it's real at all -- obsessively, painfully, with wild exultation, with guilt, with conflict; I wrote poems to and about them, I put them into novels (disguised of course); I brooded upon why they were as they were, so often maddening don't you know? I wrote them ridiculous letters. I lived with their faces. I knew their every gesture by heart. I stalked them like wild animals. I studied them as if they were maps of the world -- and in a way I suppose they were.

The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing.

life is always bringing unexpected gifts.

When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

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.