“In hell it is difficult to tell people from other people.”

“Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!" What does one do with all this crap?”

“Well Dennis you don't have to hear anyof the mountain music they play here. Telling the young lies so that they can learn to get old. Favouring themwith biscuits. "It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg toDanville, declension on a three mile grade." In either casecollision course. You either pick up the music or you don't.”

“See how weak prose is.... Presently I shall go to a bar and there one or two poets will speak to me and I to them and we will try to destroy each other or attract each other and nothing will happen because we will be speaking in prose.”

“AimlesslyIt pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. NoOne listens to poetry.— from "Thing Language”

“Beauty is so rare a th—Sing a new songRealMusicA busted flush. A pain in the eyebrows. AVisiting card— from 15 False Propositions Against God [1958]”

“Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to.”