I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem..

Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice..

The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me..

We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander..

Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I h….

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible genera….

That so much of our experience, or the stereotype which passes for it should be dealt with by means of the short story is perhaps a symptom not unnot….

Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first bu….

Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper..

Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about ….

I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow..

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

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

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

Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine ….

The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even..

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads..

Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it..

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..

A lot happens by accident in poetry..

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being u….