I find great consolation in having a lot of poetry books around. I believe that writing poetry and reading it are deeply intertwined. I've always delighted in the company of the poets I've read.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

It comes down to this: we're pieces of equipmentTo be counted and signed for. On occasion some of us break down, And those parts which can't be salvagedAre replaced with other GI parts, that's all.

The thicker one gets with some people the thinner they become.

When I travel abroad, because I'm Columbian, I'm always one that they check twice and security and I'm the one that they open my bag and the one they pull to the side to check the visa.

I have been truly blessed with the ability to compartmentalize the many competing agendas in my mind. Because of this I can shut it off and enjoy the moment.

Republicans do actually care about health care. They just don't care about government-run health care.

God turns His back on those who quarrel among themselves.

I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious.

I'd sell my soul to the devil if he'd buy such a weakly, puny, piffling little soul, just really to live and be something besides a "thoroughly nice girl" for one short year.

Tobacco is the plant that converts thoughts into dreams.

A belief system is nothing more than a thought you've thought over and over again.