The one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words.

Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more.

I must say what I admire most is the person who masters an area of practical experience, and can teach me something. I mean, my local midwife has taught me how to keep bees. Well, she can't understand anything I write. And I find myself liking her, may I say, more than most poets. And among my friends I find people who know all about boats or know all about certain sports, or how to cut somebody open and remove an organ. I'm fascinated by this mastery of the practical.

The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.

I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living.

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know. "Oh, sure you know," the photographer said. "She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.