Once you realize that human actions affect every bit of earth and sky, you realize that the environment isn't just what surrounds us - it's all one whole.

I like to use research to enlarge the poem. And sometimes a rhetorical or syntactical gesture stitches the poem along.

It's extremely important that, as writers, we give a voice to those who don't have voices, including the other animals that we share the planet with and the places that are endangered or being lost.

I am a result of what has happened on this planet - how could I find the art to say that? I can't, and yet, I am drawn to it because of the enormity of it. That seems really important.

Bringing science into poetry is one way of acknowledging some of the richest stuff that is in my cultural moment.

I've been accused of darkness by my inner light.

I don't know much about death and the sorriest lesson I've learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone's dying.

What keeps me level is the refusal to let the best of human aspirations die in the face of the challenges. I make a moral decision to be hopeful.

We're nature. Our minds are nature. Our desire to make poetry is nature.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.

Writers want recognition, audience, some corroboration that all those hours at the desk and in daydreams add up to something in the esteem of others.

When bad things happen or you don't get your own way, if you can open your heart to compassion instead of shunting it down in anger, you're going to create more light.

If you can make just one person laugh, then you are already doing better than Tony Danza.

It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.

We are His greatest handiwork even though we are still a work in progress.

As far back as I can remember I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence.

I will remember this word," he said. "Shenanigans. It is a good word.

From the heart, there is no place in America for hatred or acts of prejudice or violence or anti-Semitism.

What a country chooses to save is what a country chooses to say about itself.

No score in the other game betwen top club and bottom club, Switzerland and Georgia.

The only thing that keeps us going back to one another is that we're all filled with such enormous self-doubt. We have doubts about our ability to be alone, to self-actualize.