“You can woo a girl with a poem, but you can't hold onto her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement.”

“There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.”

“This is my last communique from the planet of the monsters. Never again will I immerse myself in literature's bottomless cesspools. I will go back to writing my poems, such as they are, find a job to keep body and soul together, and make no attempt to be published.”

“Right now you can cry and let your image dissolveon the windshields of cars parked along the Boardwalk. But you can't lose yourself.”

“His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!”

“It's absurd to see an enchanted princess in every girl who walks by. What do you think you are, a troubadour?”

“Only poetry isn't shit.”