Civil religion gives American culture its direction and defines its fundamental values, but it does not determine the diversified contents of American national culture.

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.

We experience new culture with every journey.

I don't feel so sad when somebody dies, Julio, because they fly away to explore the stars and planets. When it's our turn we join them in exploring the universe.

I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.

O tender yearning, sweet hoping! The golden time of first love! The eye sees the open heaven, The heart is intoxicated with bliss; O that the beautiful time of young love Could remain green forever.

I have been curious about Haiti for many years. The history of the country is as fascinating as it is turbulent.

Trust, faith,good, bad... none of it matters. All you ever do is what you have to do. Follow your disires, fulfill your needs, escape from pain. That's all there is to it.

My best way of making someone admit to something's wrongness is to have them imagine that thing done to them. Suddenly then it all becomes clear.

It took seven years from the time I wrote Mad Men until it finally got on the screen. I lived every day with that script as if it were going to happen tomorrow. That’s the faith you have to have.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.