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 need not to be more with others, but to be more & more deeply, richly alone. Recreating worlds.

That is salvation. To give of love inside. To keep love of life, no matter what, and give to others. Generously.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.

But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one.

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it.