Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, the dark ships move, the dark ships move, their bright ironical names like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.

I believe it's true that one person can make a difference. But how much more difference 100 people make, or rather 99.

We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.

This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.

[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.

As well have a talon as a finger, a muzzle as a mouth, as well have a hollow as a heart.

Your presence was shore where I rested/ released from the hoodoo of that dance, where I spoke/ with my true voice again.

Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shinning

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fire blazes. No one ever thanked him.

Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.

It's cool to be recognised by your peers.

Food is as important as energy, as security, as the environment. Everything is linked together.

Two or three notes of music can instantly make you feel sad or tense or afraid or angry. To do that in words is much more difficult.

The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.

You can achieve only that which you will do.

Well, fluffy shirts are, by definition, very comfortable.

When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.

Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.

I would encourage people to go to NYTIMES.com and read this column and you can see for yourself.