Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

The so-called sensitivity of neurotics develops along with their egotism

Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.

It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.

Parenting is the most important job on the planet next to keeping Gary Busey off the nation's highways.

I can't express how much admiration I have for women in general, who walk around in high heels, but, drag queens, oh my god.

Error itself may be happy chance.

What am I doing here in this endless winter?

In China, when you get to the airport everyone be talking in American slang.

The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia.

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.