Originality, of course, is what occurs when something new arises out of what's already been done.

When I stop becoming, that's when I worry.

I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit.

A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.

I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.

Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers.

Poetry does so many different things, it's difficult to say anything definitive about its role, which of course varies from culture to culture. It can range from being stories of the tribe to the private lyric, to being as W.H. Auden said "the clear expression of mixed feelings" to nonsense verse.