The body weeps the tears the eyes never shed.

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.

During the patriarchal time, the men were always and invariably dominant, legally and socially in marriage, so now it's possible to remodel the entire house of marriage, put in new footings and new joists and a new sort of interior. That is exactly what some men and women are now doing.

The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large.

The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.

What I am trying to do is bring people into grief in relation to the society we have.

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.