Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting.

Fortunately, we don't need to know how bad an age is. There is something we can always be doing without reference to how good or bad the age is.

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

It's hard to get into this world and hard to get out of it, and what's in between doesn't make much sense.

The people I want to hear about are the people who take risks.

How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton's head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.

I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.