I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

It’s the inward attention that takes you into the depth of the mind.

The poets carry feelings, delivering desires and dispatching dreams. Even if sometimes they need pack some sorrows, distill several disappointments and filter strange nightmares.

My doctor said I look like a million dollars - green and wrinkled.

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.

I've often dreamed about going back to Nigeria, but that's a very romantic notion. It's a hideous country to go to in reality.

What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.

Death came, Death went, but Commerce flowed Eternal.

I get tired of playing a guy who gets into a fight, then starts singing to the guy he's just beat up.

It's often necessary to hit a second shot to really appreciate the first one.

Kids can still call me Shaq, but adults should call me Dr. O'Neal.