“My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the needs of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.”

“I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.”

“I write poetry not for publication but merely to kill time. Airplanes are a good place to write poetry and then throw it away. My collected works are mostly on the vomit bags of Lufthansa.”

“It's the first thing I tell my students: If you could understand, really understand, that no one needs to read your work, then your writing would improve vastly by the time we meet in this classroom again.”

“At the heart of mankind's existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another. Marriage is designed to meet that need for intimacy and love.”

“The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.”