Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

The future is always beginning now.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

Each moment is a place you've never been.

When you're my size in the pros fear is a sign that you're not stupid.

If only Al Sharpton were around, Lincoln would have known he was a victim of racism.

In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.

Life is not about finding yourself. It's mostly about chocolate. T-Shirt

I'm not much into current electronic stuff, what I think of as lounge electronics, mumbling electronics.

Ooh! Jesus Christ had dreads, so shake 'em. I ain't got none, but I'm planning on growing some. Imagine all the Hebrews going dumb... Dancing on top of chariots and turning tight ones.

The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mate less play; And, while the night is gathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away.

Masturbation! The amazing availability of it!

I feel that if you're in the public eye in any way that you do have a little bit of influence on people.

Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death.