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

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.

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

Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.

They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.

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.