A young man's ambition - to get along in the world and make a place for himself - half your life goes that way, till you're 45 or 50. Then, if you're lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

For whatever you live is life.

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.

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.

If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it...if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.

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.