We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn't even read Keats's book when he gave him a copy.

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.

Earth is the play ground of our children and their children. We cannot allow it to be the play ground of the nuclear arms of the evil forces.

Misery loves companyTragically

Good actions ennoble us, we are the sons of our own deeds.

One of the most important lessons we can glean from the environmental movement is to 'think globally and act locally.'

It is a positive change that our country and other countries in the region are making by giving a chance to women.

Those who are themselves incapable of great crimes are ever backward to suspect others.

I'm the world heavyweight champion. I consider myself a citizen of the whole world.

I'm going to North Pole to help out Santa this year.

I want you to recognize that I'm a proud monkey...

We need to put people on the bench that understand the Constitution is not a living and breathing document. It is to be interpreted as originally meant.