I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.

A word (...) is never the destination, merely a signpost in its general direction; and whatever (...) body that destination finally acquires owes quite as much to the reader as to the writer.

I want you to tell all these people that I wanted more time to spend with them. Tell them I meant to, tell them I wanted to hear what they said and tell them what was on my mind.

Readers have to be sought out and won to the light of the page, poem by poem, one by one by one.

I'm not so arrogant to think I'm the only guide someone needs ... but I might be the guide that someone needs.

Secret Notes:
He wrote secret notes to people he hadn't met yet. Some of them aren't even born, he said, but we live in a strange neighborhood & they will need help figuring things out & I won't always be around to explain it to them.