Before I was a parent I was struck by Rilke, who, as you know, didn't go to his daughter's wedding because he was writing a poem that day. That was the ideal for artistic behavior in 1950. That's the way I wanted to live.

Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.

... where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be.

The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made.

There is no hierarchy in Japanese Buddhist poetry.

The sibling society is the flattening out of the previously democratic society.

The candle is not lit To give light, but to testify to the night.