Form is any aspect of a poem that encourages it to stay whole and not drift off into chaos.

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Write the poem only you can write.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

I always knew I was born to do great things. I just didn't know I wouldn't be able to see where I was going.

Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.

I've been famous for a long, long time. So I don't think of it - I think of it very differently. It's the normal temperature of my room.

Good books are the warehouses of ideas.

I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.

Television allows the audience to argue with the creator in a way you don't in a movie.

Time spent in a casino is time given to death, a foretaste of the hour when one's flesh will be diverted to the purposes of the worm and not of the will.

You are not defined by an Instagram photo, by a 'Like,' by a comment. That does not define you.

If you are just yourself, that's when people start gravitating towards you because nobody else can be you except you. Be authentic, don't give up, and start today.

Theater is a really exciting place to return to all the time because it's incredible training for an actor.