And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

Either you create million excuses or you create million rupees. But you cannot create both.

Being shot at for years by men of a particular nationality will tend to impact negatively upon one’s view of them.

Storms come to teach trees and plants how to dance in the wind.

Knowing the right detail gets you a great return. Ignore them and you just crash & burn.

Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

Sometimes you have to go through some ugly stuff to get to the good stuff.

If a man possesses a repentant spirit his sins will disappear, but if he has an unrepentant spirit his sins will continue and condemn him for their sake forever.

Being 'at the mercy of legislative majorities' is merely another way of describing the basic American plan: representative democracy.

Fate, Chance, God’s Will — we all try to account for our lives somehow. What are the chances that two raindrops, flung from the heavens, will merge on a windowpane? Gotta be Fate.

The future's here already. It's just unevenly distributed.