"That thicket gave me my first thought of what a long poem should be. Its unpeopled, life-filled stillness, its silence held by the crash of breaking waves below. I thought of a poem as a place into which one could wander, away from the cares of life. I realized its characters should be as unreal, and as utterly real, as the shadows that people this thicket."

"Where there’s life, there’s learning, and the truth is always calling us out of our pride. If we don’t harken, it will call louder, and throw a situation at us. A pebble at first. If we still don’t listen, we’ll get a stone. Then a rock. Then a great crashing boulder. We must learn, or die."

"Never be a good prisoner. Not unless you want to collude in your own imprisonment."