In Arlington, people would laugh at you if you tried to get people to look at your drawings or listen to your poetry. It was like you thought you were special.

Time passes. That's for sure.

Listen, I have been educated. I have learned about Western Civilization. Do you know What the message of Western Civilization is? I am alone.

Part of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.

Poetry is my politics. It's an opportunity that gives me a way to speak.

Urban nature is like living with mass conditions. It sometimes feels like a myth & you are its scribe.

The poet is like the wise fool or like a version of the stand-up, because we're standing, we're doing stand-up. That's exactly what we're doing.

I always think of childhood as the inarticulate moment, and you have your little camera. You were filming it, recording it, you just didn't know how to speak it.

Women aren't physically afraid of men; women are genetically afraid of men. It's happened for such a long time.

I'm a poet born in the era of Andy Warhol and a generation that wanted to be famous.

Art feels like it has this frame, and it's either outside or inside.

Submit in silence and scream from within.Or...Stand up and shout and silence the pain.

Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they're already asleep.

Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

Your heart knows the truth of openness and suffers the tense lie of your closure.

Whitewashing the pump won't make the water pure.

The family is the most important unit in time and in eternity and, as such, transcends every other interest in life.

I was mentally, emotionally and verbally abused by my father as far back as I can remember until I left home at the age of eighteen

Being on TV is similar to being an athlete. You get no second chances.

You put your hand on Corinne's back like this again and I'm breaking your fingers.