Confession makes you a more trustworthy narrator.

Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.

... I vowed that I would always respect the right of an individual to kill himself. Whether suicide was a moral or immoral act I no longer felt sure, but of the dignity of its intransigence I was convinced.

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.

In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.

My wife and daughter have accused me of being too silent at breakfast but I don't want to talk when I don't have much to say.