Unseen Complexity Quotes

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

You never knew about people, like you never knew how deep a pond was because all you saw was the top.

There is an edginess in my work that people don't always recognize.

There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.

The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.

It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it's like a circus in my head.

Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world.