I don't really think it will make much difference to me when I'm dead whether I'm read or not . . . just as whether I'm dead or not won't mean much to me when I'm dead.

The future is always beginning now.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

The idealist hopes. The romantic sees doom. The postmodernist sees doom and hopes.

If we do not fix education in Africa, we are heading for monumental economic disaster.

How can you complain? When perfection is all there is.

Adversity itself may lead toward and not away from God and spiritual enlightenment; and privation may prove a source of strength if we can but keep a sweetness of mind and spirit.

Horror alone brings peace of mind.

I was born to enjoy life. And so it is.

A beautiful problem is no joke!

Be proud to be a decent American rather than a wanker whipping up fear.

How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess. I try to stay in games where I have an edge.

There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.