Well, one is inspired by the whole of life, one's own and somebody else's. You know how sometimes you hear great music, and music is completely untranslatable into words, into any words. A certain tension that is born when one listens to music could aid you in expressing something absolutely different.

Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.

I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.

You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.

I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.