The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.

To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.