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

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

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

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.

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.

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