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

Don't go outside your house to see flowers. My friend, don't bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it, before gardens and after gardens.

Adolescents believe that the world belongs to the living, or more particularly to living people their age, so they feel within their rights if they destroy the canon or rewrite the fairy stories or act like Red Guards.

I got about half the time I wanted to write poetry. I got about half the time I needed to be a father. So there is something in adulthood that has to do with accepting the half of things, allowing a renunciation of the other half, accepting half a basket instead of a full basket.

I have risen to a body not yet born, existing like a light around a body through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

I think that poetry is important when you are shipwrecked, when the ordinary structures that hold you up are gone.

There are very few adults in our culture able to imagine any genuine life coming from the vertical plane - tradition, religion, or devotion.