I'm happy to stick with my persona. There are themes of love lost and love regained, but the main themes of all poems are basically love and death, and that seems to be the message of poetry.

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Write the poem only you can write.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

Sports have always been a really important part of how I energize myself, as well as how I relax. I spend a lot of my spare time with my family playing tennis, biking and rollerblading.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

It is impossible for any culture to be sound and healthy without a proper respect and proper regard for the soil.

There is compensation in all things.

Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.

We don't have T-shirts with my face, but there I can see the beginnings, especially young girls seeing me as sort of a icon in that way. And in that regard I'm more than happy to step in.

Dreams get you started; discipline keeps you going.

I'm doing a record that has a story that runs through all of the songs, and then there is also a film that goes along with it.

A commencement is a time of joy. It is also a time of melancholy. But then again, so is life.

The temples are a refuge from life's storms even a never-failing beacon guiding us to safety.