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

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 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.

My books have come many years apart and each one seems to reflect a period of experience. Ending the book is like putting a period on a certain movement. Interior and external - both.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools

Most people say that Shakespeare rocked merely because most people say that Shakespeare rocked.

Everyday as we die, we must be reborn. If there were no death, life would be meaningless.

I was deeply uncertain of who I was and who I wanted to be. I really thought I wanted to be a much cooler guy than what I was.

Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely.

I am I and you are you, whatever we were to each other that we still are.

It is our confidence in the sovereign grace of God that gives us any hope of success in missions.

There's no better feeling than just going in and just working with someone and what comes out is something that the world knows about.

We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.

Quality, service, cleanliness, and value.