Historically, there are hierarchies of purity. Certain aspects of poetry are very, very pure. The lyric poem can't be anything but the lyric poem.

I was always a reader. In the fifth grade, I got some sort of prize for having read hundreds of books from the library.

The sun does what it does because the earth tilts.

Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.

Society imposes an identity on you because of the way you look. Your struggle as a self has to do with an identity being imposed on you that you know is not your identity.

You probably have to split yourself in various ways just in order to survive, and to think of yourself as a multitude.

I would say that when I write prose I'm a more socially responsible person. I'm much more a citizen of the world. But the instability of the poetry, the emotional jaggedness, is also me.

You don't think of yourself as your external representation, or even your national origin or anything like that. You don't reduce yourself to that. That's kind of unthinkable.

I resist thinking of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a writer who has pulled a fast one and hoodwinked this institution into giving me a job and health insurance.

I think that when you reveal things that are going to cause pain, you have rhetorical resources in poetry.

We all think of ourselves as our subjectivity, our consciousness.

You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.

What I’ve learned is there’s a scientifically proven phenomenon that’s attached to gratitude, and that if you consciously take note of what is good in your life, quantifiable benefits happen.

So often we have a kind of vague wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man.

Yesterday is ashes tomorrow wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly.

I love in Notting Hill. You live in Beverly Hills. Everyone in the world knows who you are. My mother has trouble remembering my name.

I write the most sexiest records out.

The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.

I actually like jokes as well as things that are sort of fun.

At the cross, the worst about us-our sins-was laid upon Christ, and the best about Him-His righteousness-was laid upon us.

At a certain age some people's minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat.