I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

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 poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.

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.

Poets, we know, are terribly sensitive people, and in my observation one of the things they are most sensitive about is money.