I like to move around in the landscape between poetry and prose, between the lyrical and the narrative.

One of the things I'm constantly telling my students is that they're never going to write a poem everyone gets, or if they do, they've failed. They should leave someone behind every time.

Human suffering is articulated in language; communication is how we seek help, consolation, etc.

I figure I write for people who are intelligent enough to do some labor. Lazy readers are not my ideal readers.

Revision is a good impulse to have.

I turned to human suffering because - this may sound odd - animal suffering is more difficult for me to deal with.

I never try to force poems into a collection simply because they were written/published within a certain period of time. They will eventually find their perfect home.

I enjoy working on a number of projects - books - at once.

I tend to overuse the word "project" only because "book" is terrifying while I'm still in the middle of something. A project can fail. I don't want a book to fail.

I always revise when I publish in a book. So versions in magazines are sometimes slightly different.

I pay editors. I never ask friends or colleagues to work for free.

You have worked too long in the life, now its time for heroism.

Government in the last analysis is organised opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion there is likely to be bad government which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.

Pebble Beach. It is tough and the lay out is amazing.

Patriotism is the secret resource of a successful society.

First you find a little thread, a little thread leads you to a string, and the string leads you to a rope. And from the rope you hang by the neck.

I have just read your dispatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses, Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the Battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood - nobody!

The world you live in is 100 percent your own responsibility. If you don't like your world, it doesn't work to say, "Well, it's my mother's fault. She taught me how to think."

Such philosophy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable speculation but shall be operative to the endowment and betterment of man's life.

She was one if the few souls that made me wonder what's it to live.