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

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

[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.

For the truth is a terrible thing.

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.

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

All I've tried to do (with my writing) is capture the essence of my time.