Autobiography is a genre notorious for falsehood.

My devils and angels, fears and hopes, insights and stupidities, loves and loathings, are what they are. I don't edit them out so much as try to make them interesting - whether I am talking to you, or writing a poem, or joking with my kids, or speaking on television.

In the particular presence of memorable language we can find a reminder of our ability to know and retain knowledge itself: the brightness wherein all things come to see.

If a poem is written well, it was written with the poet's voice and for a voice. Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument.

Autobiography is a genre notorious for falsehood.

Whatever makes a child want to glue macaroni on a paper plate and paint the assemblage and see it on the refrigerator - that has always been strong in me.

An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond... a good feeling about his art.