Human life is too difficult for people.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.

I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags - they're gonna cough.

I did loads of student films and fringe theatre. I worked for free a lot.

Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.

America is constantly involved in unnecessary wars.

We are just strings of quarks living in a suburb of the local density maximum of the universe.

When we were in the seminary we got a stipend direct from the government and for that stipend we had an obligation to stick to our teaching job for five years.

Moses and the crooked snake... that turned into a stuck, that was actually a disintegrator pistol.

those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.

Three things have helped me successfully go through the ordeals of life -- an understanding husband, a good analyst and millions of dollars.

Once you duct-tape a Ziploc bag to a man's chest, there's no going back.