“The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.”

“Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.”

“After Auschwitz"Anger,as black as a hook,overtakes me.Each day,each Nazitook, at 8: 00 A.M., a babyand sauteed him for breakfastin his frying pan.And death looks on with a casual eyeand picks at the dirt under his fingernail.Man is evil,I say aloud.Man is a flowerthat should be burnt,I say aloud.Manis a bird full of mud,I say aloud.And death looks on with a casual eyeand scratches his anus.Man with his small pink toes,with his miraculous fingersis not a templebut an outhouse,I say aloud.Let man never again raise his teacup.Let man never again write a book.Let man never again put on his shoe.Let man never again raise his eyes,on a soft July night.Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.I say those things aloud.I beg the Lord not to hear.”

“She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid.”

“Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.”

“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.”

“Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.”