Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.

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.

Jimmy Boom Semtex says Semtex goes BOOM! Handle his books with care.

That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.

I do think your attitude towards money is an inherent part of your character.

I've done signings where elderly people will line up to get photos with me and ask me to sign things. They don't even pretend it's for their grandkids. They're like, "No, it's for me."

It would drive me crazy to be a guest in my own house.

We are still working with an incomplete compass. The time is right to bring the full power of genomics to bear on the problem of cancer.

Regarding the fitness craze: America has lost its soul; now it's trying to save its body.

I think it's every artist's nature to want to escape. It's also human nature in a way, depending on your personality, to want to get away from it all.

Acceleration is finite, I think, according to some laws of physics.

In the 70s and 80s, I made a good living. Have managed my funds carefully, will never have to go out and cadge quarters from the tourists.