I think of my best poems as vessels that I can or hope to fill with everything I have.

Poetry needs to be alive, unabashedly, and, for me, that entails seeing its complexity, the grit and grimness and jubilance and beauty.

Poetry does need a bit of ferocity. The only way to attend to the fractured world is to write a ferocious kind of music, to sing that volatility.

The more prose I wrote, the more the pendulum swung back toward the middle, merging some poetic sensibilities with the more fundamental elements of creative prose.

I found it incredibly challenging to write clear prose that had the dynamism that I wanted.

Well, we're all going to die, so mortality is a part of writing and life.

Being deeply aware of fragility and ecstasy seems to me an essential part of being alive and living fully - and there's no way for me to separate this from my poems.

Yes she met with a slight accident involving a stake." Ash said "funny how that happens sometimes...

Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults

Nature understands you more than you understand nature. Nature is your true mother.

I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.

I believe only foreigners should run for president...Face it, the presidency is a lousy job. And who does lousy jobs we don't want anymore better than foreigners?

You can either look at things in a brutal, truthful way that's depressing, or you can screw around and have fun.

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: 'Checkout Time is 18 years.'

I think I do better when things are a little tougher.

Knowledge is understanding based on what has been studied and learned. Wisdom is understanding based on what has been felt and experienced.

Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go.