Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem.

Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.

Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.

I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.

Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more.

Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate.

The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition.

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking

Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.

A nation's art is the expression of its soul.

I speak to you in one tongue/ but every moment that ever mattered to me/ occurred in another language.

For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them …

I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment.

Embrace and fall in love with the original version that God made you in.

Maybe, " she said. "Maybe. But now you're making promises you might not be able to keep, and that's how people in love get very badly hurt.

When people refer to me as a 'regular' girl...it's code word for 'fat' in Hollywood....But...my body has chosen its shape. I'd rather be strong than skinny.

I'm Kevin Nealon, and that's news to me.

My parents didn't treat me as if there was anything in the world I couldn't do, except be unkind.

Don't ask me, I don't know

It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.

A wandering minstrel I A thing of shreds and patches Of ballads, songs and snatches And dreamy lullaby!