I am that last, that final thing, the body in a white sheet listening.

People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not.

There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem.

Some things never leave a person: scent of the hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

Real atheist is not the one that does not believe in an imaginary big monkey, but the one that gives the imagination more importance than the reality.

I didn't want to spent a lot of close time with someone who believed that fun is a bourgeois indulgence.

Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.

Well, how'd we get to talking about our ancestors? People think we don't talk about anything else in Charleston.

There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops.

Not every book is for every reader.

To get from people you had to give a piece of yourself, a real piece that mattered. Just being nice was not enough.

As we practice meditation, we get used to stillness and eventually are able to make friends with the quietness of our sensations.

If a person weren't failing in some way, shape or form, would he or she need to blame, justify, or complain? The obvious answer is no.

Efficiency obliterates identity