...by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it's too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?

For the truth is a terrible thing.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

If you are an idealist, it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.

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.

Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful exercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all the animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.