Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.

Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

I write in the first person because I have always wanted to make my life more interesting than it was.

Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left.

It worries me about our unwillingness to really address reforms and modernization in Medicare. This thing was designed 37 years ago. It has not evolved to keep pace with current medical technology.

I have my family, my children - I have a lot of outside activities.

I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.

War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health.

A bad neighbor is a misfortune, as much as a good one is a great blessing.

I know that war is very cruel and that life is harder when you aren't able to live in the place you called home.

I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.

I've been a fan of me ever since.

Thus may poor fools Belive false teachers.