Many poets write as if they had been decerebrated, and not simply lobotomized, as a cure for their melancholia.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

The ways we miss our lives are life.

The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

Read at whim! Read at whim!

We can't tell our life from our wish

It is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

Except from the Americans—but every pearl has its oyster.

Crazy people love their Kindles.

My family was poor, my father drove a cab for a living, but we felt normal because everybody else was in the same boat.

Give up wanting to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking anybody can be grateful.

[A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.

Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

There are no new cash payments or obligations here. This is an accounting reflection of the deal they announced on Monday. It's all by the books.

If you can influence the outcome, do the work. If you can't influence the outcome, ignore the possibility. It's merely a distraction.

When I'm not working on the ground, spending time with my husband and daughter puts me at ease.

We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies, the song of the birds, if we can't see the stars at night.