As things get worse, poetry gets better because it becomes more necessary.

Time passes. That's for sure.

Listen, I have been educated. I have learned about Western Civilization. Do you know What the message of Western Civilization is? I am alone.

Part of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.

Poetry is my politics. It's an opportunity that gives me a way to speak.

Urban nature is like living with mass conditions. It sometimes feels like a myth & you are its scribe.

The poet is like the wise fool or like a version of the stand-up, because we're standing, we're doing stand-up. That's exactly what we're doing.

I always think of childhood as the inarticulate moment, and you have your little camera. You were filming it, recording it, you just didn't know how to speak it.

Women aren't physically afraid of men; women are genetically afraid of men. It's happened for such a long time.

I'm a poet born in the era of Andy Warhol and a generation that wanted to be famous.

Art feels like it has this frame, and it's either outside or inside.

When evil rules a time and place, certain good people are called upon to tell the truth to those who don't want to hear it.

I'm proud to say I've never been anybody's lapdog.

Space and time are not objects of perception, but qualities of awareness

I'm only waiting for my wife to grow up.

I would never have been a novelist without working as a psychologist...it was a great education in human nature.

Providence has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots.

It is better to allow our lives to speak for us than our words.

There is nothing more startling in human relations that the strong emotion of weak people.

Being halfway through my life, I think we start feeling less invincible and we start thinking more about the important things.

While I was serving, I worked as an adventure training officer, teaching soldiers how to ski, canoe and climb.