No ideas but in things.

It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It is not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages.

The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.

The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky.

As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.

It is not fair to be old, to put on a brown sweater.

There is nothing beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will.

My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. ... it filled me with soul satisfying joy.

Somewhere the sense makes copper roses steel roses — The rose carried weight of love but love is at an end — of roses It is at the edge of the petal that love waits.

I think there is no better way to invite a human being to view their body differently than by inviting them to be an athlete, by revering one's body as an instrument rather than just an ornament.

You have to be a really talented writer if you're trying to encapsulate a news story with a song and have it live after the event. I don't have the focus to do that, really.

My mother, Evelyn, was an actress and singer, and my father, Jack, was an actor. My earliest recollection of my father is being taken to see him in a matinee.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

Not an ugly color, Nanny thought. Just not a human color.

I grew up in Boston, so it's a nice change to be cold after living in California.

Human problems are complex. If something isn't complex it doesn't qualify as problematic. Very simple bad things are not worth troubling ourselves about.

I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America.

Style is the instrument you can pick back up when you want to regain some of the confidence you've lost.

No, I won't try to escape myself by losing myself in artificial chatter 'Did you have a nice vacation?' 'Oh, yes, and you?' I'll stay here and try to pin that loneliness down.