I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

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.

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

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

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

The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."

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