Keep growing. Stay awake. Beware of gurus. Keep a low overhead.

I think translation is an impossible job, and I admire the people who do it in a way that brings poetry to us that we wouldn't have access to.

Rhythms and sounds are often the first thing I hear and want in a poem, so I can't imagine trying to translate something without at least being able to hear what it sounds like.

It takes courage to get clear about what your vision of the work is and to be persistent about it and pursue it, whatever you're saying. I'm still in a long learning process.

Whether the poet is living or dead, they're part of our imaginative community.

People need what they think of as a poem to be read at their bar mitzvah, their wedding, a funeral, whatever. And people are looking for hope and inspiration. I understand that.

Teaching has given me a community that cares about poetry, and I'm grateful for that.

I'm much more capable of cutting back than of expanding. I've gotten very surgical about poems.

I'm trying to stay open to the idea that the Internet is not the evil foe of publishing but the handmaiden that will turn out to be a blessing for poets and writers.

There are some books in which every poem is a facet of the same thing. So the book is like a piece of music. And there are books of poems that I love so much that I carry them around with me.

My books have come many years apart and each one seems to reflect a period of experience. Ending the book is like putting a period on a certain movement. Interior and external - both.

Yo can always take back the lost parts of yourself if you can find and recognize them.

I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion and information, such feebleness of thought.

He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy.

When I was 18 I was an emotional wreck and I couldn't imagine having to deal with some kind of fame.

Speaking in front of a large crowd is not pleasant. Once it gets rolling, it's okay. But beforehand, it's murder.

And that, Annette, is called Pilates

Once you do one bad guy, usually all you get offered is bad guys.

American Medical Association [AMA] was strongly opposed to any scheme for group practice and to health insurance ... because they are un-American.

There's an older generation that feels like they know what the future should be. And then there's your generation that may have an idea of what the future should be, but that could evolve.

You'll never have a garden - a garden needs walls and you have no walls.