I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases . . . but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book.

Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do.

One aged man - one man - can't fill a house.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

Writing a poem is discovering.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.