I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.

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.

The desolate narrowness, the definitive thinness of experience is both the vainglory and the dead giveaway of a provincial man.

If we spend more time praising and thanking God for His daily benefits and blessing and all the good things He bestows, there wouldn't be time to blame, complain. cry and moan over the bad things.

What is impossible today can become possible tomorrow only if we do what is possible today.

No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman.

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.

If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.

If you believe something enough, it comes true eventually, and that's so true even with lies. If you tell yourself a lie, after a few years you'll think it's true.

There is no profession more essential than that of an educator, and it's time for all of us to embrace and celebrate their importance and contribution to America's children.

I like the Bible folded between lids of cloth, or calfskin, or morocco, but I like it better when, in the shape of a man, it goes out into the world-a Bible illustrated.