When I Am Working I Immediately Feel

The Creative Person, The Person Who Moves From An Irrational Source Of Power, Has To Face The Fact That This Power Antagonizes. Under All The Superficial Praise Of The Creative Is The Desire To Kill. It Is The Old War Between The Mystic And The Nonmystic, A War To The Death.

In The Middle Of The Night, Things Well Up From The Past That Are Not Always Cause For Rejoicing--the Unsolved, The Painful Encounters, The Mistakes, The Reasons For Shame Or Woe. But All, Good Or Bad, Give Me Food For Thought, Food To Grow On.

... The Reason Why There Are So Few First-class Poets Is That Many People Have Intense Feelings Or First-class Minds But To Get The Two Together So That You Will Be Willing To Put A Poem Through Sixty Drafts, To Be That Self-critical, To Keep Breaking It Down, That Is What Is Rare. Right Now Most Poetry Is Just Self-indulgence.

Joy, Happiness ... We Do Not Question. They Are Beyond Question, Maybe. A Matter Of Being. But Pain Forces Us To Think, And To Make Connections ... To Discover What Has Been Happening To Cause It. And, Curiously Enough, Pain Draws Us To Other Human Beings In A Significant Way, Whereas Joy Or Happiness To Some Extent, Isolates.

I Think That Passion If Really Intense Is Always Destructive If Not To The Two Involved, Always To Other People.