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.

Fire is a good companion for the mind.

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.

Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation

There were moments ... when it seemed that all one could be asked was just to keep the ashtrays clean, the bed made, the wastebaskets emptied, as if one never got to the real things because of the constant exhausting battle to keep ordinary life from falling apart.