I like having a phrase lying around to get poems started. It's like having a key.

I think about the body kind of all the time, being as how I'm really uncomfortable in mine.

I hope I can write toward my interests. But poets should be afraid of too fluidly responding to what they're interested in.

I just can't write and listen to music at the same time.

I do believe in Jesus as wholly God and wholly human, and I believe the human part was human.

I actually can't listen to music and write poetry at the same time, but I do kind of think about the music I've been listening to when I write.

I don't know that I find either aspect of Jesus more interesting than the other, although maybe I think about the God one more.

I'm always glad that other people are way smarter about my poems than I am.

I had/have a habit of sending books out before they're ready. And then I edit with almost absurd intensity. But I've done about a book a year.

I think I cause a lot of headaches for editors - it's impossible to keep up with the ridiculous amount of changes I make.

I wanted to be a composer for a while, and for a while, and maybe still, I found writing music much easier than writing poetry. So maybe my brain clings to it.

She said, "You may be able to implant an image, even a taste or a smell, but I don't think you can implant the feelings that went with the experience that created the memory.

Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections.

Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

It's a brutal regime, in the Assad regime, that is willing to take any measure, no matter how immoral or war criminal acts, to persecute its goals.

Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter's over.

I stole a lot from Gary Oldman. I stole the hairdo from his incarnation of Dracula. We cheated it just enough, so we couldn't get accused of copyright infringement.

It's a different thing when you play on a team that has to win, that doesn't consider it a good year unless you win the championship

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.