John Ashbery in the Paris Review:

 Susan Sontag was at this writers' conference also—there were just four of us—and one night in Warsaw we were provided with tickets to a ballet. I said, “Do you think we should go? It doesn't sound like it will be too interesting.” And she said, “Sure, we should go. If it is boring that will be interesting too” —which turned out to be the case. But it doesn't really matter so much what the individual thing is. Many times I will jot down ideas and phrases, and then when I am ready to write I can't find them. But it doesn't make any difference, because whatever comes along at that time will have the same quality. Whatever was there is replaceable. In fact, often in revising I will remove the idea that was the original stimulus. I think I am more interested in the movement among ideas than in the ideas themselves, the way one goes from one point to another rather than the destination or the origin. The pathos and liveliness of ordinary human communication is poetry to me.