Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event.

I have become an orchid washed in on the salt white beach. Memory, what can I make of it now that might please you- this life, already wasted and still strewn with miracles?

A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.

We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love—a connection between things.

In life, the number of beginnings is exactly equal to the number of endings ... In poetry, the number of beginnings so far exceeds the number of endings that we cannot even conceive of it.

in the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak.

I'm lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love - write poems - and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me.

Art has always been aware of itself as art.

In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?

In the end I would rather wonder than know

The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.

Only when people are aware will they start to care.

Jewish people, we don't need the money. We're doctors and lawyers. It's the Christians who can't hold a steady job and have to go on TV and ask for money.

Proof ... was a conclusion built on a pyramid of facts, a broad base of accepted information on which more specific assertions were made.

Most of my friends love going out, but I have to get a lot of sleep. If I don't, it shows up on my skin and under my eyes.

I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me it is like a mythical place.

I used to have an imaginary friend named Michael.

I didn't play my best but I won. He was a lucky loser but I think he went out of luck today.

Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.

I was an activist long before I even entertained the possibility of being an actor.