I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'

Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.

To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.