I never try to force poems into a collection simply because they were written/published within a certain period of time. They will eventually find their perfect home.

One of the things I'm constantly telling my students is that they're never going to write a poem everyone gets, or if they do, they've failed. They should leave someone behind every time.

Human suffering is articulated in language; communication is how we seek help, consolation, etc.

I figure I write for people who are intelligent enough to do some labor. Lazy readers are not my ideal readers.

Revision is a good impulse to have.

I turned to human suffering because - this may sound odd - animal suffering is more difficult for me to deal with.

I like to move around in the landscape between poetry and prose, between the lyrical and the narrative.

I enjoy working on a number of projects - books - at once.

I tend to overuse the word "project" only because "book" is terrifying while I'm still in the middle of something. A project can fail. I don't want a book to fail.

I always revise when I publish in a book. So versions in magazines are sometimes slightly different.

I pay editors. I never ask friends or colleagues to work for free.

If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

Money is ‘limited’ and people’s demands are ‘unlimited’.

Everybody knows we're big liberals and I was a very outspoken Hillary Clinton supporter, and I still am. It's impossible for us to separate the songs we're writing from what's going on in the world.

I live in New York and I'm in New York basically all the time. I spend a lot of my time in my restaurants, and I feel like that's why they're successful.

How hard it is to project oneself into the future. We are always prone to think of the conditions which are with us today as being permanent conditions.

I was going to die, but I didn't have to grovel.

I want to produce images that startle one into recollection.

The probability that a genius can do stupid things is much higher than the probability that a stupid can do genius things.

Either the kid was naturally hyper or he was hopped up on enough caffeine to give a heart attack to a water buffalo.

Come, then, let us go forward together with our united strength - and win a better future for generations to come.