I'm not going to talk like I know about politics because I'm a total amateur but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren't normally interested in politics.

I think what's fascinating is how many people are playing in politics who maybe haven't played before.

You don't go after poetry you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a lot of the work.

I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife who was very smart about poetry.

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

Maybe it's like becoming one with the cigar. You lose yourself in it everything fades away: your worries your problems your thoughts. They fade into the smoke and the cigar and you are at peace.

Most of us really aren't horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us. Put 'em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature rather than being the lords over nature.

What I'm attempting to do is to show people that if I can spend some time with very dangerous spiders and snakes and scorpions then maybe they'll feel different about the spiders and snakes they find around their areas. I don't need people to keep them as pets. I just like them to be respectful and see that everything in nature has its place.

Maybe nature is fundamentally ugly chaotic and complicated. But if it's like that then I want out.