It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

Poetry, above all is a series of intense moments ­ its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.

Philosophy cannot be taught

The best tactic against evil isn't confront with him, otherwise is to get away from him

And I howled at that swarm and the crops and the sky, and the stars should have quit because there weren't no reason to be shining.

Donald Beardslee is set for execution this week in California. His crimes were about twenty years ago, but it will be the first execution in California in quite some time.

Trying to force things only disturbs your goals. Forcing will not help. Everything happens in its right time.

I'm a much happier guy than a lot of people think I am.

Can you remember when you didn't want to sleep? Isn't it inconceivable? I guess the definition of adulthood is that you want to sleep.

We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Our fathers had their dreams; we have ours; the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.

Compared with the awesome might and eternal power of the ocean, no human being can fail to be reminded of their own insignificance.