We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time, but that's the implacable judgment of feeling.

The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

The artist's work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the heart of wonder. Celebration is social, amenable. Wonder has a chaotic splendor.

I come from people who have always been polite enough to feel that nothing has ever happened to them.

In memory each of us is an artist: each of us creates.

Planes are my foxhole. I'm always on my knees in them.

Refuse to write your life and you have no life.