A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Write the poem only you can write.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.

Usually, new producers and writers want to put their stamp on a show. They don't want to continue what's working. They want to reinvent the wheel. It's an ego thing.

The only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is.

O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!

Songs suffer at the mercy of the performer.

I ignore all the doomsaying nonsense. I'm in a business where the odds of ever earning a living are a zillion to one, so I know itcan be done. I know the impossible can become possible.

Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.

I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.