“The claw / Of the magnolia, / Drunk on its own secrets, / Asks nothing of life.”

“My life is a discipline, a prison: I live for my own work, without which I am nothing.”

“Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.”

“You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time...”

“Is it the sea you hear in me,Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”

“I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned upand be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free - The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)”

“Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.”