There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

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.

Why am I fixated on that man? I don't want to realise that now. That I want him to love me. I want him to love me. I want him to love me so much I could die.

A decent boldness ever meets with friends.

The Government's business is in sound condition.

Let thy speech of God be renewed day by day, aye, rather than thy meat and drink.

Walk with the rich Walk with the poor Learn from everybody That's what life is for.

Refusing to teach a passage of Scripture is just as wrong as abusing it

Everybody out there is just doing things for themesleves. So if you don't do that you've got to be crazy ... crazy about selfless giving!

To want is more than to attain.

Not an ugly color, Nanny thought. Just not a human color.

I guess good things come to those who wait.