The West is anxious about becoming another Africa, and it has dug deep moats in the hopes of preventing that, but it's too late: it has already become another Africa.

Poetry either pulses with real life or it's just an aborted simulacra. There's no middle ground.

Fear knows no borders, and the terminology of hate has seeped into every aspect of life.

One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.

Everyone wants to be open and inclusive, but nobody wants to pay for it. It's the biggest roadblock to translating living writers, especially poets.

I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me.

I can't quite see the point of poems like "Wittgenstein Goes for a Walk with A Hawk in Sherwood Forest." I know they're trying to be clever, but they're not.

I don't like poems that invent memories, I have enough of my own.

As Trevor Noah recently quipped, the US appears ready to crown its first African dictator: Donald Trump.

The average political poem - especially the kind that wears this label all too proudly - is both dull and full of brow-beating triteness.

Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it.

Perseverance is the act of true role models and heroes.

A man who truly knows himself realizes his own worthlessness, and takes no pleasure in the praises of men.

The truth is always more powerful and stronger than love, because the love becomes powerless in the absence of the truth.

The first time I sang with David Daniels... I had never performed with a countertenor before. That first time was magic, it was so beautiful. And he's such a great artist.

Conscious of our many problems, I seek today to lay a foundation to our public policy. My fundamental purpose is to devote my term of office to raising the standard of public service in New Jersey.

Rock is all about writing your own script; it's all about pioneering.

There's a ton of potential to do something absolutely loopy with a world that you create and characters that you are literally surgically constructing.

I looked for the church and I found it in the world; I looked for the world and I found it in the church.

Whenever a woman would come too close, I would cut her off. Part of that was vindictive - but that was totally subconscious.

God knows we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace he requires no more than he gives, but gives what he requires, and accepts what he gives.