Shoes twisted into incredible lilies.

It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It is not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages.

The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.

The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky.

As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.

It is not fair to be old, to put on a brown sweater.

There is nothing beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will.

My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. ... it filled me with soul satisfying joy.

Somewhere the sense makes copper roses steel roses — The rose carried weight of love but love is at an end — of roses It is at the edge of the petal that love waits.

All writing is filth

There is no clear sign that the economy is turning the corner in a meaningful way.

Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past.

Jews are living in the past and they can't get over it.

If I'm hated, okay. I don't believe that.

You wanna get diarrhoea? Eat industrial food.

The organizing principle of the United States defensive foreign policy had been opposition to the Soviet Union. There is no more Soviet Union.

I saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.

But learn this custom from the flower: silence your tongue.

I was always looking outside of myself for stories and ideas and influences and then I kind of realized in 2010, that all of this time, I've developed a "sound." And I've never fully explored it.