A symbol serves to combine heart and intellect.

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

Process as process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We may judge results but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the deed which is good. The morally good agent may perform the deed which is bad. Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

You don’t choose a story, it chooses you.

For whatever you live is life.

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.

History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that.