I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.

Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.

For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

There’s a ghost of a dream that you don’t even try to shake free off because you’re too in love with the way she haunts you.

A fish in a bowl thinks to know it all, for it has never seen the ocean.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.

It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others.

Beer is God's way of telling us that he loves us and wants us to be happy.

The only way to be an actor is to find ways to work as an actor, even if that means doing a one-man show by a river.

President Bush says now he is sticking to his plan for handing over power to the Iraqis on June 30. It's also part of his plan to hand over power to John Kerry on January 20.

I can't really articulate what I feel.

In all the splendor of solitude... it is a test of myself, and one thing I loathe is to have to test myself in front of other people.

Get Health. No labor, effort nor exercise that can gain it must be grudged.