Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.

The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pacing horses, then coach horses, then work horses, finally saddle horses. I grew up around, on, and under horses, fed them, shoveled their manure, emptied the mangers of corncobs.

To eat in the same room where food is cooked - that is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance.

Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

When your first marriage goes into tragedy, you become very battle-scarred... I even thought of suicide. Luckily, I had known some happy marriages.

There must be an alternative between Hollywood and New York, between those two places psychically as well as geographically. The University of Iowa tries to offer such a community, congenial to the young writer, with his uneasiness about writing as an honorable career, or with his excess of ego about calling himself a writer.