Some things never leave a person: scent of the hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not.

There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem.

In writing poetry, all of one's attention is focused on some inner voice.

When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.

So many things in language can never be known or settled or explained, except by custom.

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.

When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row.

No one is mandating merit pay.

I know exaggerators of both kinds: people whose lies are only picturesque adjectives, and people whose picturesque adjectives are only lies.

If you're ordering me an edible arrangement to say thanks, I'd prefer a meat one.

I have noticed that teachers get exciting confused with boring a lot.

I wonder that you will still be talking. Nobody marks you.

Throughout early modernity there were very strong pressures on Jews to assimilate. Assimilating meant cutting your ties with the community of origin.