“Without play at many levels of language, from phonemes to logical structures, a poem is merely prose with linebreaks added.”

“A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.”

“Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.”

“In the final analysis, it is not critics who create literary canons, it is other writers who create them .... A writer can have published thirty-seven volumes, but if that writer doesn't interest other writers, they will all molder in the library and nobody will ever want to read them again.”

“One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.”

“In her excitement at the idea of just walking out the door she had walked out the door without stopping to practice and without even her sheet music, and now she had nothing to play from and nothing prepared.Some people might have been daunted by this setback. The Konigsbergs faced musical catastrophe on a daily basis, & their motto was: Never say die.”

“Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within”