Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

Always learn poems by heart,' she said. 'They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

The view of the highway was so bad that you could not even see the next viaduct. Te moment it loomed out of the mist it disappeared again, as if the world created itself and was blotted out again.

Things weren’t real to you. They were just raw material for you to reshape to tell a story you liked better. You could never just listen to a boy play guitar, you’d have to turn it into a poem, make it all about you.