Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

What are we? Young or new? We must be something.

We get twitted now and then on how we made this country. Well, we took the whole business, of course. It's not just that corner that we took from Mexico. When we got it all together, we got a very shapely country-the best continental cut in all the world, between the two oceans and in the right temperature zone.

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds.

What we live by we die by.