All my closest friends came to me through poetry. My wife, too! Other than my family, poetry is the gravitational force of my life.

Always in search of the question that might make you ask me one in return

I see sad crushed plastic everywhere and put some thoughts composed of words that do not belong together together and feel a little digital hope.

This, in the end, might be the greatest social good of poetry: to get us to live differently, with a different sort of thinking and concentration, even if it's just for a few moments.

That choice to be ready to reject all other purposes, in favor of the possibilities of language freed from utility, is when the writer becomes a poet.

I guess my poems feel to me a bit like they are doing something in relation to experience, i.e. time.

So for whatever reason those short lines just felt right to me, in my physical self. They were right for the movement of the poems. Some poems in the book have longer lines.

Miroslav Holub seems to expect his readers to act like scientists, who are curious in every direction, take nothing for granted, and are willing to accept any truth, however unexpected.

Somewhere back a whiskey or so ago I wrote that thinking was a real thing in the world, just like anything else. I mean that very literally, materially. And it's true about poems, too.

I feel because I am never in my comfort zone I have an advantage.

I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this, we need to be careful with drugs! They're not just all fun and games! And of course poetry would be immeasurably worse without humor.

We can be competitive and aim to destroy our opponent or competition, but we can still respect our rivals and even be friends.

Look, do you see that poem?' she said suddenly, pointing.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number.

When diving to attack always leave a proportion of your formation above to act as top guard.

When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise.

Try honest to see things from the other person's point of view.

If you have a lair then you are probably not a good person.

Quanity has it's own quality.

Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often students, for heaven's sake.

When things are at their worst, I find something always happens.