I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.

I tried to think of something to say. Excuse me? Hello? Marry me? Anything would have done.

Have faith, because life changes fast, I've learned that much.

a bit of a dirty fighter, quick with cutting words that he later regrets and doesn't really mean. Then again, I wonder if there isn't always a grain of truth in them, somewhere

Every building is a prototype. No two are alike.

The topics just kind of come to me. If they are relevant, it's because they're happening in the world around me, and it's affecting me. Poetry is my way of dealing with it.

When I'm lying drunk at an airport the press call me Irish... but when I win an Oscar, I'm classified as British.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

What scares me is how easily it happened.

Tears are the noble language of the eye.

How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?