Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions.

I have thought for many years that the audience any creative writer imagines has a great effect on what gets written.

One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language.

I see my poems as interlinked. No poem gives an answer. It may offer other questions, it may instigate other questions that then become poems.

The poem is a process, a way for me to discover questions, to ask them clearly or to discover the results of certain suppositions. Suppositions are a form of questioning.

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

My object when writing prose is to write as clearly as possible. I think I know what I'm saying in prose, and I want others to understand it and to be able to restate it.

The greatest tragedy that can befall a poet is to be praised by being misunderstood.

I think parts of my soul have been saved by my writing, not in the sense of escaping death, but escaping the death of the moment, perhaps.

I've spent much of my life being attuned to watching for an image or a phrase that can trigger what might be a poem - could become a poem.

ON LIVING LIFE WISELY - To make the right choices, you have to be at peace with yourself.

Life in fear is the worse tragedy that can happen to a man

Polly had arrived in the world outraged to discover that her sisters had gotten there before her.

If a player is not interfering with play or seeking to gain an advantage, then he should be.

I love my job and I think my job is hard, but also, my job is such a privilege.

That's it. With equal parts regret and relief, the Jane's Addiction experiment is at an end.

Memory itself is an internal rumour.

What prevents a man's speaking good sense with a smile on his face?

Words have no power when someone isn't listening to you anymore

I'm learning as much martial arts as I possibly can. My show is packed with action. Enough to get a rise.