“Poetry, like sanctity, is the orchestration of multiple attributes into vast, compelling wholes.”

“A poem is contained movement. ”

“Few things contain and impact the immediacy of cultural impress so evocatively as books, and not only through their ideas. A book is an artifact, and every age establishes upon the basic functional structure its own particular stamp.”

“The historic transition from Novice to Proficient to Adept was said to be accomplished virtually overnight by the progression from marijuana to peyote to lysergic acid. Instant mysticism had arrived. Before the court of law, hippies demanded freedom for LSD the way early Christians demanded freedom for the Eucharist.”

“Art is not the handmaid of politics. It is its own remedy! And its healing is sacral.”

“One of the deepest needs of the human soul is for centeredness . . . which confers meaning on the shapelessness of temporal existence.”

“Furthermore, the initial page, always crucial, passed every test, with its promises and divisions, its portentous opening paragraph like the great door of a church, its exotic setting and strange names, the rolling orchestration of its prose.”