The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.

For whatever you live is life.

I longed to know the world's name.

If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it...if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.

Dying--shucks! If you kin handle the living, what's to be afraid of the dying?