Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.

Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

I write in the first person because I have always wanted to make my life more interesting than it was.

Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed. The poet's pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader's pleasure in unlocking and revealing these secrets.

I was right when I said I’d never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can’t ever do anything else except look back.

Fear of death is worse than dying.

One for whom the pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes.

No one will make progress with God until our eyes are lifted to the faithfulness of God and we stop looking at ourselves!

A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers.

We set out to become a band for our time. But sometimes if you do a good-enough job, you become a band for all time.

If you come from a normal family, you immediately start playing the role of a boy, a girl a man or a woman, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that those are only roles, limited roles, at that.

There is not a country on earth whose people don't deserve to be free and safe.

Being honest with you, it's not the 'great' wall of China. It's an all right wall. It's the 'All Right Wall of China.'

What draws friends together does not conform to the laws of nature.