I've written some poetry I don't understand myself
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
What is a stratosphere fourteen miles from the earth or a sunken glass house on the sea-bottom amid fish and feather- stars unless a bet that man can shove on beyond yesterday's record of man the hoper, the believer?
I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you.
These wheels within wheels These leaves folded in leaves These wheeling winds and winding leaves Those sprockets from those seeds This spiral shooting from that rainfall- What does a turning earth say to its axis? How should a melon say thanks Or a squash utter blessings?
A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one.
I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.
I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.
We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.
I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget.
Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life.
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.