When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.

...a man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.

If you are an idealist, it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.

I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.