Sometimes people come up and they get infatuated with some little brief imagistic poem or something, and they say, "Oh, I really like your Zen poems." And I say, "Which ones are not Zen poems?"

The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something done about it.

If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward April, then we would know.

Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal.

It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.

I'm basically a poetry scholar, and I'm happier here in my studio with my row of Chinese dictionaries than I am, frankly, at Lincoln Center.

Of course, there are some people who behave rudely. Allen Ginsberg used to like to get up in public and take his clothes off. I don't do that, but I liked Allen Ginsberg. He was a nice guy.

I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often. I know that I certainly have. That's easy to do.

George W. Bush is using language that's a mirror image of the language of Osama bin Laden when he says, "We have God on our side. This is the struggle of good against evil."

I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one another and toward our environment.

The soul that is unable to forgive is sentenced to an endless purgatory where time stands still and it is forced to relive its pain over and over onto eternity.

No one can take away your Natural Rights, but they can do great damage making you think they can.

I have an awfully good life.

The measure of man's humanity is the extent and intensity of his love for mankind.

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

Praise, of all things, is the most powerful excitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.

For every horrific event, something beautiful happens.

Everything that thou reprovest in another, thou must most carefully avoid in thyself. [Lat., Omnia quae vindicaris in altero, tibi ipsi vehementer fugienda sunt.]

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.