The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful... to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

All I know is a door into the dark

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

Gather the best you have to offer and create a heartfelt, prosperous life full of purpose.

It's just that the chaos has changed shape. The giraffe and the bear have traded hats, and the bear's switched scarves with the zebra.

Ez for war I call it murder - There you hev it plain and flat I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment for that.

Sometimes our motivations can be quite hazy, contradictory and multi-faceted, in real life.

There are never beginnings and endings in my work; everything just fits into place after a while.

Whatever ignominy or disgrace we have incurred, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation.

Death is the ultimate boundary of human matters.

Winning takes precedence over all. There's no gray area. No almosts.

If we were redesigning around people instead of around automobiles, which I think the market is more or less going to do, although too slowly, than I'd be a lot cheerier.

Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.