It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something (All The King's Men)

How do poems grow? They grow out of your 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.

There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain.

It all began, as I have said, when the Boss, sitting in the black Cadillac which sped through the night, said to me (to Me who was what Jack Burden, the student of history, had grown up to be) "There is always something." And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge." And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.

...a man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.