Beauty is like life itself: a dawn mist the sun burns off. It gives no peace, no rest.

I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive.

To me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life.

Every breath is a resurrection.

That's crudely put, but If we're not supposed to dance, Why all this music?

When you're a young poet, reading is a search for your lost family.

Poetry is the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of despair and into the light.

When it's right you can't say Who is kissing whom.

To guide someone through the halls of hell is not the same as love.

With "poets dead and gone" as Keats says in "Mermaid Tavern" they are alive and talking to us and us to them.

Maybe she loved me, maybe not –who knows?Not even the godscan see intoa human heart –it’s that dark.

You can't get decent Mexican food in DC.

You know what Marshall needs to do. He needs to stop being sad. When I get sad, I stop being sad, and be awesome instead. True story.

Instinct is all of our humanity being deliberately honest with all of life.

While the world piles fear on top of light, our job is to remember that light within. When we do, whatever seems to conceal it ceases to exist

I learned this a long time ago. If you call a guy into your office and shut the door, if there’s media around, it sends up a red flag. I never wanted to embarrass a player.

It doesn't matter how much his mother loves him; love is not enough to keep any of us alive.

Singing is easy. The proof is always in the living.

I had my coat hangers spayed.

Put your financial life on autopilot as a form of 'forced' saving.

Lose the chrome-plated sissy pistol and get yourself a Glock.