Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?

In America they have to know just what you are-- novelist, poet, playwright... Well, I've been all of them... I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It's not like, say, playing polo and knitting.

How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.

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

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

For whatever you live is life.