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

The lead either forges an instant connection with the reader, or the package fails.

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 saw Sophia Loren - the Italian woman with those wonderful cheekbones - in a movie the other day. She must have had 24 face-lifts, and she looks like an alien, as if she weren't from this world at all. Her Italian wrinkles would have been a thousand times more beautiful.

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

You have an utterly sincere glance when you look around after you are shipwrecked. You weep a long time on an island when you realize what's happened to you.

There are years from my childhood that I cannot remember and I cannot forget.