"A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does."

"Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts."

"I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry."

"The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry."

"A chronicle is very different from history proper."

"If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace."

"World history is tragic."

"Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century's attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission."