There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.

I love being a writer. It's the paperwork I can't stand.

My three~ years [of wordless existence] allowed me to see, to feel, to hear--to remember, as if I literally had been born again. Little matter that I had been born again in hell; reworked experience is the stuff of all true poetry and raw experience was the birthing gift of my new life.

It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things.

Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affection and the truth of Imagination--What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth--whether it existed before or not.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.