Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more.

Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.

Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.

I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.

Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate.

The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition.

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking

Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.

A nation's art is the expression of its soul.

Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem.

I speak to you in one tongue/ but every moment that ever mattered to me/ occurred in another language.

Encouragement gives us wings to fly on.

To fall in love is a legendry action that doesn't need any explanation.

I can play a cat lady. I can't put my foot down and refuse to play anything but playing the perfect, well-adjusted woman, because those people aren't as fun or funny.

Everyone in my family is an artist. Both my parents are painters and my mom's an opera singer. I was never shown any other way to process life.

Many say our world is at a tipping point. If we do not act together, if we do not act responsibly, if we do not act now, we risk slipping into a cycle of poverty, degradation, and despair.

You can vote Liberal or Labor and you’ll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school

...the exchange of students...should be vastly expanded...Information and education are powerful forces in support of peace. Just as war begins in the minds of men, so does peace.

As a little kid, I climbed a lot of trees because I always loved the bird's-eye view.

A penumbra of sombre dignity has descended over his reputation.

Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.