Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it.

In the world of imagination, all things belong.

You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.

Scholars look for final truths they will never find. Creative writers concern themselves with possibilities that are always there to the receptive.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

...an imagined town is at least as real as an actual town. If it isn't, you may be in the wrong business. Our words come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost. It can be hard. It can be worse forty years from now if you feel you could have done it and didn't. It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential.

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance.