Human life is too difficult for people.

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

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.

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

Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But they were sleigh bells, not church bells, for we lived in a part of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where there were no churches.

All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love.