It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.

Everything you need will come to you at the perfect time.

From without no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves unless some interior responding wonder meets it.

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something that I can do.

Let the desert wind cool your aching head. Let the weight of the world - drift away instead

I think science fiction is very bad at prediction.

I'm always changing things around. I have to change it all the time. I'm rearranging furniture and taking down paintings and putting up new ones, and buying new pieces of art.

If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

Americans want to be exposed to the opportunities that a changing world can offer.

Chicago is known as the Windy City, and Montana is called the Big Sky State, so I think that we should somehow combine the two to create the ultimate kite-flying experience.

Pity those who don't feel anything at all