Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

The future is always beginning now.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

Fear and Love are the two emotional pillars of survival.

Morality is societal, but kindness is universal. Be kind even if it not always ethical.

There's a quote of hers [Lucille Ball] that I've always loved: 'I guess I would rather regret the things I've done than to regret the things I've never done.

One life - a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.

An angry father is most cruel towards himself.

Initiation means the Journey Inwards: nothing is changed or can be changed; but all is trulier understood with every step.

Think, in mounting higher, the angels would press on us, and aspire to drop some golden orb of perfect song into our deep, dear silence.

We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.

There is nothing that isn't perfect, the only reason we don't see that perfection constantly is because we lack humility.

Michael Taylor is not being executed for homicide. Michael Taylor is being executed for raping a white female.