It is the first experience you ever had of reading a decent poem: 'Oh, somebody else is lonely, too!

I have become an orchid washed in on the salt white beach. Memory, what can I make of it now that might please you- this life, already wasted and still strewn with miracles?

A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.

We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love—a connection between things.

In life, the number of beginnings is exactly equal to the number of endings ... In poetry, the number of beginnings so far exceeds the number of endings that we cannot even conceive of it.

in the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak.

I'm lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love - write poems - and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me.

Art has always been aware of itself as art.

In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?

In the end I would rather wonder than know

The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.

Be the music of your soul. Don't be a pawn in someone else's game.

Once upon a time, I thought denial was a river in Egypt. It's actually the attitude of the Abbott government.

I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.

Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.

Fantasies are absolutely safe, as long as you never try to make them a reality.

All results of the profoundest mathematical investigation must ultimately be expressible in the simple form of properties of the integers.

I don't know lots of things but I know this: next year when spring flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to drown in the shimmering miles of it.

I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.

I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.

Zounds! sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bid you.