“Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.”

“Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it ...”

“The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just any words, but, if you can, into rhythm and blues.”

“What else is a poem about?The rhythm and the images buried in the language. All the ways you can build an emotion with words, but you can't just write 'I feel sad.' I mean, you can, but it's not poetry... I think it has to be experienced instead of studied. You step into it.”

“In the distance I hear a song - a simple song - a song of despair - a song of longing and a song of sorrow.I have forgotten the words and the rhythm, but I sing.Yes, I sing.”

“As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs...The way I write is who I am, or have become...”