Sometimes the title comes to you at the beginning, sometimes it comes at the end. The very best way in my experience is when it comes in the middle.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

Stay humble as a writer: write on toilet paper.

Innovation grows out of membership and a sure sense of responsibility people feel for their work and the organizations that employ them.

I ask the American people not to fall victim to disinformation. There are no death panels. The Affordable Care Act cuts the deficit.

What we do not understand, we cannot control.

I think once you've seen a song with a video, it limits your own mind's ability to read into it anything other than what you've seen.

I do admit to being slightly in love with Christopher Walken.

Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.

I wept because I was re-experiencing the enthusiasm of my childhood; I was once again a child, and nothing in the world could cause me harm.

My mother told me many stories about her childhood in Cuba. Living there had a profound impact on her and how she regards herself.

My father taught me to be independent and cocky and free thinking, but he could not stand it if I disagreed with him.