What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.

More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any other poet must he wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of himself.

The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow.

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.

If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car, it'll be the last car he'll ever lay down in front of.