I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other.

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.

In the high tide or low tide, I'm gonna be your friend... I'm gonna be your friend!

There is no bitterness like that of man who finds out he has been believing in a ghost.

But stay away from him, Juliana. When we said we wanted to make you a good match, Leighton was not who we imag

Hope is the positive mode of awaiting the future.

The Book Highlights and Attacks areas of Inefficiency and Hypocrisy in Government Offices. It injects the much-need Enema into its Highly Constipated System.

There is a chalk outline slowly being drawn around common sense and most people can't identify the victim.

Scientists in general tend to have what I would call a bit of hubris that the public do not necessarily understand. So scientists some times make claims that are misunderstood by the public.

That's one of those things that will really hurt me personally, if I label a character or think about what it might do if it were to do well. I just try to do a good job with it.

Barbie has always been an inspiration. Dressing her was part of ever girl's dream.

Risk is an essential part of progress.