What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

All still when summer is over stand shocks in the field, nothing left to whisper, not even good-bye, to the wind. After summer was over we knew winter would come: we knew silence would wait, tall, patient calm.

You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.

What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.

A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.

Writing itself is one of the great, free human activities. There is scope for individuality, and elation, and discovery. In writing, for the person who follows with trust and forgiveness what occurs to him, the world remains always ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream. Working back and forth between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision.