I was unnerved to learn in my twenties that the poems of Emily Dickinson that I had memorized as a girl were not the poems as she had written them.

You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem.

Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.

The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace.

One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity.

The art of utterance persuades initially by its music and its rhythm, before semiotic or personal characteristics come into play.

All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual.

I do not give the honorific name of 'poetry' to the primitive and the unaccomplished.

A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.

When I first heard Wallace Stevens voice, it was by chance: a friend wanted to listen to the recording he had made for the Harvard Vocarium Series.

Some dreams shouldn't be remembered.

Stress is just for those who have not yet tried and trusted in God. -178

I can't imagine anything more worthwhile than doing what I most love. And they pay me for it.

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

What's happening in the world is a natural course of events.

There shall be no slave in your home, male or female: Least of all the mother of your son.

I will not leave the Republican Party, ... The Republican Party is my home.

One could look over the past century and ask oneself, has the increased longevity been good, bad or indifferent?

Bill Clinton outshines John Adams in that regard.

Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.