George W. Bush is using language that's a mirror image of the language of Osama bin Laden when he says, "We have God on our side. This is the struggle of good against evil."

The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something done about it.

If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward April, then we would know.

Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal.

It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.

I'm basically a poetry scholar, and I'm happier here in my studio with my row of Chinese dictionaries than I am, frankly, at Lincoln Center.

Of course, there are some people who behave rudely. Allen Ginsberg used to like to get up in public and take his clothes off. I don't do that, but I liked Allen Ginsberg. He was a nice guy.

I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often. I know that I certainly have. That's easy to do.

I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

Sometimes people come up and they get infatuated with some little brief imagistic poem or something, and they say, "Oh, I really like your Zen poems." And I say, "Which ones are not Zen poems?"

Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one another and toward our environment.

To believe all you have to do is look at the sky.

I hope that no American will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant.

I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.

The reluctant hero is always fun to play.

I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law.

He that pitties another, remembers himselfe.

Now it's time to focus on basics for people in our neighborhoods... and real ethics reform at City Hall.

I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

The tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others.

The world is always changed by people who don't listen to conventional wisdom. I think we often set our goals too small and try to accomplish them too quickly.