That summer we had been absolutely alone, together, even when people were around, the only inhabitants of the kind of floating island or magic carpet which being in love is.

I reckon I am a smart aleck, but it is just a way to pass the time.

What if angry vectors veer Round your sleeping head, and form. There's never need to fear Violence of the poor world's abstract storm.

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.

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

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.

Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds.