Bringing science into poetry is one way of acknowledging some of the richest stuff that is in my cultural moment.

I like to use research to enlarge the poem. And sometimes a rhetorical or syntactical gesture stitches the poem along.

It's extremely important that, as writers, we give a voice to those who don't have voices, including the other animals that we share the planet with and the places that are endangered or being lost.

Once you realize that human actions affect every bit of earth and sky, you realize that the environment isn't just what surrounds us - it's all one whole.

I am a result of what has happened on this planet - how could I find the art to say that? I can't, and yet, I am drawn to it because of the enormity of it. That seems really important.

I've been accused of darkness by my inner light.

I don't know much about death and the sorriest lesson I've learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone's dying.

What keeps me level is the refusal to let the best of human aspirations die in the face of the challenges. I make a moral decision to be hopeful.

We're nature. Our minds are nature. Our desire to make poetry is nature.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.

Writers want recognition, audience, some corroboration that all those hours at the desk and in daydreams add up to something in the esteem of others.

[T]he experience of mystery comes not from expecting it but through yielding all your programs, because your programs are based on fear and desire. Drop them and the radiance comes. (16)

Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.

I don't like to overcook songs.

Above all, we ask the poet to teach us a way of seeing.

She will love deeply--suffer terribly--she will have glorious moments to compensate.

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West.

The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn't move, kick it until it does.

Clay is one of the best things you can put in your body.

When AIDS was at its most brutal, frightening, my-God-what-are-we-going-to-do era, that was when vampire stories and stories about blood and trust swept the literary world.

Hearing the blues changed my life.