How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

There are two kinds of writing the one you write and the one that writes you. The one that writes you is dangerous. You go where you don't want to go. You look where you don't want to look.

The Doktor was an old man. When he was a kid, his Dad bought him a chemistry set. He never played with silly putty like the other kids. The first time he lost his eyebrows he was only five.

America needs to relearn a lost discipline, self-confident relentlessness...

It's never too soon to worry. Worry spurs preparation.

One of the special marks of the Holy Ghost in the Apostolic Church was the spirit of boldness.

The two things you can't fake are good food and good music

I closed the box and put it in a closet. There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.

The PP has spent 3 years thinking about the election (in 2008), but I think that one has to give them some advice: to prepare themselves to carry on thinking, but about the election in 2012.

It helps if you really enjoy your jobs. If you don't, then just think about the money.

The hare grows old as she plays in the sun And gazes around her with eyes of brightness; Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done She limps along in an aged whiteness.