My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.

And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.

There are writers who are great visionaries, who can depict huge movements - things like that. They're the great writers. I'm just the other kind.

My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn't be able to make it from room to room.

Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing.

I can make a couple of good sandwiches: tuna salad and chopped egg salad. And Greek bean soup. I was a cook for my old Zen master for many years. So there were two or three dishes that he liked, you know. Teriyaki salmon, a few things.