As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery.

I was much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre.

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It's also an influence in the way you see everything - in the way you feel your life.

I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.

I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.

My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

Mankind needs new law to embrace new science.

Art is everywhere.

All people are brave when their power is rising.

You can think all you can but don't publicize all your thoughts

Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things

The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.

Keep breathing. Just keep doing it. It's easy. In and out.

I can explain all the poems that were ever invented - and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.

O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy.

I just want to make good music that, you know, appeals to all people, man. I want to branch out and you know just have a lot of multiplatinum albums.