"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."

"Don't try to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

"The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."

"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."

"The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it."

"Skill and confidence are an unconquered army."

"If you look after the pennies, the dollars will look after themselves."

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry."

"Do what you can with what you have, where you are."

"From the age of six, I have known that I was sexy. And let me tell you it has been hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it."

"The only thing you will ever be able to say in the so-called 'social' sciences is: 'some do, some don't."