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.

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

Everything seems an echo of something else.

Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.

To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.

The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.

The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.