It takes a long time to publish a book.

You aren't just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.

I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.

Poetry is a deliberate attempt to make language suggestive and imprecise.

One trouble with a kind of falsely therapeutic and always reassuring attitude that it is easy to fall into with old people, is the tendency to be satisfied with too little.

You are the sole owner of your heart, so be careful of whom you give access to.

It’s not bravery unless you are doing something which causes you to feel afraid. Unless there is some degree of fear or apprehension involved, bravery is not even needed.

The way the world underestimates me will be my greatest weapon.

It has long been a theory of mine and I am known, if I do say so, for my long theories that authors, generally speaking, are rotten letter writers.

This world we exist in is populated by people who have really shut themselves off from life.

Knowing that we don't know it's humility; thinking that we know what we don't know, is sickness.

It is in the darkest night that the light we are shines brightest

Whatever makes a child want to glue macaroni on a paper plate and paint the assemblage and see it on the refrigerator - that has always been strong in me.

The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.