Once I was on the job, once I had got started, I felt safe enough, but the anticipation made me tense.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

All I know is a door into the dark

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

A pen, a piece of white paper, and an idea can create a new you.

I don’t know what I’m doing, or where I’m going, but I do know that I want to do whatever it is and get there soon.

Growing up, I believed in miracles. I guess I don’t anymore.

Publication in 'The New Yorker' meant everything, and it's no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.

For as fire is kindled by fire, so is a poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.

The sound needed a hub to grow, and that hub was Big Apple.

You know, frankly speaking, money just doesn't figure largely in my world view.

The power of a dream is that it frees up your imagination to think about the best possible scenario for your life.