As if hands were enough To hold an avalanche off.

I was much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre.

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It's also an influence in the way you see everything - in the way you feel your life.

I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery.

I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.

I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.

My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation.

What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child

Be grateful for the twists in the road. They teach us humility and grace. And any dancer in this life requires both

One day you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted. Do it now.

I have always been into music. That's my number one passion.

I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.

The enemy just hates our prayers.

I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not.

The teacher, whether mother, priest, or schoolmaster, is the real maker of history.

I got started at a really young age. I was about two years old when I started playing the piano and around seven or eight when I started writing my own chords and putting words together.

In the end what will prevail is your passion not your tale, for love is the Holy Grail.