I love that people want to know about poetry. It's one of the ways of keeping alive.

I think translation is an impossible job, and I admire the people who do it in a way that brings poetry to us that we wouldn't have access to.

Rhythms and sounds are often the first thing I hear and want in a poem, so I can't imagine trying to translate something without at least being able to hear what it sounds like.

It takes courage to get clear about what your vision of the work is and to be persistent about it and pursue it, whatever you're saying. I'm still in a long learning process.

Whether the poet is living or dead, they're part of our imaginative community.

People need what they think of as a poem to be read at their bar mitzvah, their wedding, a funeral, whatever. And people are looking for hope and inspiration. I understand that.

Teaching has given me a community that cares about poetry, and I'm grateful for that.

Keep growing. Stay awake. Beware of gurus. Keep a low overhead.

I'm much more capable of cutting back than of expanding. I've gotten very surgical about poems.

I'm trying to stay open to the idea that the Internet is not the evil foe of publishing but the handmaiden that will turn out to be a blessing for poets and writers.

There are some books in which every poem is a facet of the same thing. So the book is like a piece of music. And there are books of poems that I love so much that I carry them around with me.

Your oddity is your hottest commodity but you scratch yourself like it's the lottery to reject yourself mentally, spiritually & bodily.

Hang tightHold on Look upStay strongHang on Hold tightLook strongStay up One day I might breakOne day I mightb r e a kfree

people believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.

Is my life, by any chance, about to take a new turn?

Is this what she would have wanted, Hawke?" Ronan asked quietly. "Justice at the cost of an innocent man and his child?

You've got as many lives as you like, and more, even ones you don't want.

Isadore [Duncan], who had an un-American genius for art, for organizing love, maternity, politics and pedagogy on a great personal scale, had also an un-American genius for grandeur.

I try to balance independent films with commercial films, and I've done a pretty good job of it over the years.

Openness fundamentally affects a lot of the core institutions in society - the media, the economy, how people relate to the government and just their leadership.

Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.