Nobody Really Knows Whether They

The Writing Of A Poem Is Like A Child Throwing Stones Into A Mineshaft. You Compose First, Then You Listen For The Reverberation.

I Prefer Writing In The Mornings, So To That Extent I Have A Routine. I Do Reading And Other Things In The Afternoon.

An Aria In An Opera - Handel's 'ombra Mai Fu,' For Example - Gets Along With An Incredibly Small Number Of Words And Ideas And A Large Amount Of Variation And Repetition. That's The Beauty Of It. It's Not Taxing To The Listener's Intelligence Because If You Haven't Heard It The First Time Round, It'll Come Around Again.

Windbags Can Be Right. Aphorists Can Be Wrong. It Is A Tough World.

Saigon Was An Addicted City, And We Were The Drug: The Corruption Of Children, The Mutilation Of Young Men, The Prostitution Of Women, The Humiliation Of The Old, The Division Of The Family, The Division Of The Country-it Had All Been Done In Our Name. . . . The French City . . . Had Represented The Opium Stage Of The Addiction. With The Americans Had Begun The Heroin Phase.