"Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you/ That you may be my poem/ I whisper with my lips close to your ear/ I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you."

"If I had cut sex out I might just as well have cut everything out. The bulk of the pieces might as well have been left unwritten were those lines omitted. The full scheme would no longer exist—it woul…"

"I am a man of the people, and I shall always be a man of the people."

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long."

"I have no doubt that the universe is a gigantic poem."