I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. Use it or lose it, he’d say over the newspaper.

If you think goodness and decency is the way to merit a good life from God, you will be eaten up with anger, since life never goes as we wish.

if all you ever do is want after things, you’ll never get them.”