Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy, To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly.

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.

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 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.

I've found that one of the most important things in life is to learn how to forgive yourself.

JD/Dr Cox: The second you start blaming yourself for people's deaths, there's no coming back.

The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit.

Im so sick of people treating Latinos like some homogenous group that all feel the same way about everything.

Figure out what fuels your joy, then do lots of that

I could get into bed with James Bond, then take my false leg off and it would really be a gun.

Who is an artist? I say we take a title. No one gives it to us. We make our lives.

The empty nest is underrated.

Failure isn't final until you quit!!