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.

Human life is too difficult for people.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

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.

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