“A man was the cause of it.An unarmed man with a weapon.”

“How funny you are today New Yorklike Ginger Rogers in Swingtimeand St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the lefthere I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there stillaccepts me foolish and freeall I want is a room up thereand you in itand even the traffic halt so thick is a wayfor people to rub up against each otherand when their surgical appliances lockthey stay togetherfor the rest of the day (what a day)I go by to check a slide and I saythat painting’s not so bluewhere’s Lana Turnershe’s out eatingand Garbo’s backstage at the Meteveryone’s taking their coat offso they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchersand the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoesin little bagswho are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Ywhy notthe Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they wonand in a sense we’re all winningwe’re alivethe apartment was vacated by a gay couplewho moved to the country for funthey moved a day too sooneven the stabbings are helping the population explosionthough in the wrong countryand all those liars have left the UNthe Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interestnot that we need liquor (we just like it)and the little box is out on the sidewalknext to the delicatessenso the old man can sit on it and drink beerand get knocked off it by his wife later in the daywhile the sun is still shiningoh god it’s wonderfulto get out of bedand drink too much coffeeand smoke too many cigarettesand love you so much”

“Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.”

“and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paintyou suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did themI lookat you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the worldexcept possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frickwhich thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time”

“I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life’s fabric, to the world’s beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!”

“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”

“That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg.”