I believe it's true that one person can make a difference. But how much more difference 100 people make, or rather 99.

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.

We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.

This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.

[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.

As well have a talon as a finger, a muzzle as a mouth, as well have a hollow as a heart.

Your presence was shore where I rested/ released from the hoodoo of that dance, where I spoke/ with my true voice again.

Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shinning

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fire blazes. No one ever thanked him.

It seemed to me as we were talking about Christ rising from the dead, the sun popped over the mountain. That was indicative of Christ rising - a new day. It just makes sense.

We ought to compliment and not to compete with one another.

I have lost friends some by death ... others by sheer inability to cross the street.

I think I'm going to cry, this is crazy." "No, you're just processing. Go ahead and cry." "I thought men got nervous around crying females." "I'm a Marine, remember? We're trained to handle anything.

My eyesight is not nearly as good. My hearing is probably going away. My memory is slipping too. But I'm still around.

The vice presidential candidate tends to be a bit of an afterthought.

The role of Jews who write in both the Jewish and [American] general press is to defend Israel.

Hockey seems completely lawless and, therefore, inexplicably sexy.

And I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States.

No person loving or admiring himself is alone.

Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.