A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

This isn't your world. It's your parents. Your world is still out there, waiting to be discovered. Always remember that.

To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone.

My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.

The worst pressure is the pressure I put on myself.

My mom and my dad taught me the greatest gifts we have are our family, our health and the right to clean water and good land.

Ideally, you would live in an area that is not necessarily in the middle of the country, out in the woods, because you can isolate yourself there and get stuck in your own thoughts.

There's a ton of truth in Flannery O'Connor's notion that "Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.

It's fun to deal with the terror and the huge highs and lows of things. We're still getting massive surprises, every time you have any kind of Twilight-related event or anything.

We are synonyms but not the same.