One thing is certain: the arts keep you alive. They stimulate, encourage, challenge, and, most of all, guarantee a future free from boredom. They allow growth and even demand it in that time of life we call maturity but too often enter it with a childish faith that what we learned in youth is sustenance enough for the years when most men are mentally famished but won't admit it—or when they are apt to curb their hunger with the sops of complacency, security, and the assurance of death.

Stories always have held conflicts and contrasts, highs and lows, life and death situations. And there can be much suffering in stories, but now we say the artist doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand the human condition, understand the suffering.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

I'm one of those people who says, 'yes, cinema died when they invented sound.'

Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

The people need poetry that will be their own secret_x000D_ To keep them awake forever,_x000D_ And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.