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

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 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.

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.

One land also shall ask another, and say, ‘Is righteousness that makes a man righteous gone through thee?’ And it shall say, ‘No.

He who is born of God, overcomes the world

I think a person permeates a spot, and a lost presence makes the environment timeless to me, keeps an area alive. It pulsates because of that.

Surrendering yourself to God is the only solution to all your problems.

Happiness is never a negative affair; it is to be won by men who are fully alive, full of the joy of living

Our good and bad deeds follow us almost like a shadow.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day

I like to stay artistic. So I always like to draw or write.

Each of us is the only person who can give the other what each of us wants to have: Peace.