I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30.

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.

We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.

Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success; others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one's virginity,it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.