But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

I write what's given me to write.

My earliest poems were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself.

I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.

How weightless/ words are when nothing will do.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don't come back.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

You have begun to separate the dark from the dark.

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.

Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.

Men don't get smarter when they grow older. They just lose their hair.

Everyone has choice when to and not to raise their voices: It's you who decides.

We are at full stop. We think we have arrived.

My comments concerning persons afflicted with AIDS as well as various minority groups have left people wondering if I am a racist.

The other side of every fear is a freedom.

I know I cannot undo this. None of us can undo what we’ve done, or relive a life already recorded.

I learned that if I could read, I could cook. I surprised myself I like it.

How much more interesting life would be if only more people had the courage and skill to act themselves, instead of abjectly understudying some one else!

Poets find truth by writing about what they love.