The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by….

For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when yo….

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other..

[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time..

For the truth is a terrible thing..

I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had ope….

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without..

The past is always a rebuke to the present..

How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the mean….

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful..

There ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and….

I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan..

Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at y….

That summer we had been absolutely alone, together, even when people were around, the only inhabitants of the kind of floating island or magic carpet….

Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure..

A young man's ambition - to get along in the world and make a place for himself - half your life goes that way, till you're 45 or 50. Then, if you're….

What is man but his passion?.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it..

Process as process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We may judge results but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the deed which is….

...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom….

My only crime was being a man and living in the world of men, and you don't have to do special penance for that. The crime and the penance, in that c….