Listen, I have been educated. I have learned about Western Civilization. Do you know What the message of Western Civilization is? I am alone.

Time passes. That's for sure.

Part of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.

Poetry is my politics. It's an opportunity that gives me a way to speak.

Urban nature is like living with mass conditions. It sometimes feels like a myth & you are its scribe.

The poet is like the wise fool or like a version of the stand-up, because we're standing, we're doing stand-up. That's exactly what we're doing.

I always think of childhood as the inarticulate moment, and you have your little camera. You were filming it, recording it, you just didn't know how to speak it.

Women aren't physically afraid of men; women are genetically afraid of men. It's happened for such a long time.

I'm a poet born in the era of Andy Warhol and a generation that wanted to be famous.

Art feels like it has this frame, and it's either outside or inside.

People love discovering you. The thing about not being historically a mainstream writer is that everyone feels like you're theirs, you're their friend.

Nothing means anything but you still have to follow the rules.

My luck's no greater than yours or any man's. You need only sharpen your eyes to see your luck when it comes, and sharpen your wits to use what falls into your hands.

Julia Roberts taught me how to knit on the set of 'Mona Lisa Smile.'

A change in language can transform our appreciation of the cosmos.

Near, far wherever you are...you're here in my heart.

I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.

With regard to military discipline, I may safely say that no such thing existed in the Continental Army.

Whatever you think of Romney and his politics, as a human being there's none better. As a man of integrity, man of character, there's none better.

That we have collectively failed to halt and repudiate the war in Iraq makes us even worse than the Germans.