Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.

I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

Corncobs are the greatest fire-making tinder.

Where were the scientific pamphlets that taught a woman how to listen to herself die?

Keep your focus laser-locked on what you want to create in your life.

He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.

Have fun - a smile is the most beautiful thing on a woman.

Do you know how many movies I wrote when I was high?

Sociology seems to have missed every intellectually promising boat in the last half century.

She'd play around and tease me with her carefree devil eyes. She'd hold me close and kiss me, but her heart was full of lies.

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.

Life has to be described in pure and simple physical and physiological terms. It must be demystified and depsychologised

The learning person looks forward to failure or mistakes. The worst problem in leadership is basically early success.