We've let too much time go by. We've been busy with war instead of being busy with peace. And that's what space travel is all about. It's all about peace and exploration and wonder and beauty.

I believe in creative failing - to contine to write poems that fail and fail and fail until a day comes when you've got a thousand poems behind you and you're relaxed and you finally write a good poem.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do-and they don’t. They have prejudices.

The blizzard doesn't last forever; it just seems so.

Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.

You'll be found, your nickels, dimes and Indian-heads fused by electroplating. Abe Lincolns melted into Miss Columbias, eagles plucked raw on the backs of quarters, all run to quicksilver in your jeans. More! Any boy hit by lightning, lift his lid and there on his eyeball, pretty as the Lord's Prayer on a pin, find the last scene the boy ever saw! A box-Brownie photo, by God, of that fire climbing down the sky to blow you like a penny whistle, suck your soul back up along the bright stair!