To conquer a piece of earth and make it as beautiful as one can dream of it being: That is art, too. A man cannot be separated from the earth. I come out of the garden every day feeling, oh, inspired in a way that one needs in order to convert the daily-ness of the life into something greater than that little life itself.

Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.

A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.

I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.

The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language.

When they shall paint our sockets gray And light us like a stinking fuse, Remember that we once could say, Yesterday we had a world to lose.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.