Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading.

Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it.

Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.

No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.

We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.

One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem.

The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.

What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem.

We love disasters that have nothing to do with us

Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah, and I was his ark, and there were two of every animal inside me

Let them eat cake.

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul.

The dog has an enviable mind; it remembers the nice things in life and quickly blots out the nasty.

I look down and see little kids in the audience and I'm like, "Oh man, I hope I'm not poisoning these kids!"

Talk isn't work. Work is when you have pages in the evening that you didn't have in the morning.

I get a lot of my inspiration from my family, but I never got to meet my dad's dad.

We're used to thinking of fun as a sort of synonym for light pleasure.

so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I'll write, because I'll give - You critics means to live; For should I not supply - The cause, the effect would die

Generally I'm quite picky - I usually don't approach a person unless I think we have some sort of cohesive way of working together.