Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not.

There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem.

Some things never leave a person: scent of the hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

In writing poetry, all of one's attention is focused on some inner voice.

If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?

Because of my schooling, my fate would always be a little different from my friends.

It really shocked me just to hear of the fans' response to 'St. Anger' not having guitar solos.

I've always felt a little misrepresented in the world.

Everlasting peace will come to the world when the last man has slain the last but one.

Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.

Great things that can happen when you're doing a movie.

The amount of money one needs is terrifying.

The album ['A Seat at the Table'] really feels like storytelling for us all and our family and our lineage.

I'm not an original composer. The tunes are not stolen from other tunes necessarily except in a few cases, but they're in the style of songs that I grew up with.