I'm afraid we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from others.

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

I write what's given me to write.

My earliest poems were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself.

I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.

How weightless/ words are when nothing will do.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don't come back.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

You have begun to separate the dark from the dark.

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.

Life is nether food nor drink. But the faith of a dance dream.

Obstacles accelerate transformation

When you get divorced and remarried, nobody gets discarded. Everybody is still there. Even if their storyline is not directly yours.

Success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.

[A person’s] utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.

One of the greatest assets you have is your imagination.

If we don't believe in Americans, who will? I do believe. I've seen it in the people of our very typical corner of the nation.

I can't help it if the ladies take note of me; I am not going to protest.

Our bodies are the time machine.

I am not a contemplative type, basically. I am much more of an action person and, as a consequence, I look forward to today and tomorrow and what's breaking.