Life is not lost by dying! Life is lost, Minute by minute, day by dragging day, In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways...

You can take off your hats now, gentlemen, and I think perhaps you'd better.

I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird.

Life is not lost by dying! Life is lost, Minute by minute, day by dragging day, In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways...

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

Books are not men and yet they are alive. They are man's memory and his aspiration, the link between his present and his past, the tools he builds with.

Most of the time I'm not really attracted to writing that's focused on filling and fighting it out within a well-defined container. I like work that gets out in the world and lets the world shape the poem.