I didn't choose poetry: poetry chose me.

As a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like.

How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.

I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action

Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP

What will survive of us is love.

I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.