Now I must wait and be still and say nothing I don't know, nothing I haven't lived over and over, and that's everything.

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

I write what's given me to write.

My earliest poems were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself.

I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.

How weightless/ words are when nothing will do.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don't come back.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

You have begun to separate the dark from the dark.

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.

The sky of the color of ashes in the east and embers in the west.

For the record, I believe in God, but I do not believe in religion, period.

The depositary of power is always unpopular.

Unalienable rights are essential limitations to all governments.

The absolute worst thing a person can say about your pictures is, '"That's nice." It's the kiss of death.

Christian action in the world will not be sustained or carried on in an intelligent and effective manner unless it is supported by doctrinal convictions that have achieved some degree of clarity.

No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed.

Every soldier knows this simple fact: If you don't know your enemy, you will not be able to defeat him.

I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THIS SOCIETY! First they try to murder me then they lie to me!

Why I am NOT going to buy a computer