"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together."

"I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them - one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking."

"There is too much government today. We've got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people."

"My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god I believe the earth is god and the universe is god. We're all god."

"I love to write poetry."

"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."

"The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?"

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."