The more that accrues, the more depth, weight, and breadth we can bring to the poems, which we then need to throw overboard so we don't sink.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.

A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.

I have always loved too much, or not enough.

We continue to speak, if only in whispers, to something inside us that longs to be named.

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.

Everything that lives lives not alone nor for itself.

There is no problem that is not actually a gift.

Gradually, you were given a description of the world, a way of seeing, which is largely sexual.

And I spent that time working as an insurance adjuster and going to law school in the evening, and then when I left law school, I joined the Department of Justice in Washington.

Once you've been really bad in a movie, there's a certain kind of fearlessness you develop.

I really do see the good in people, and I don't want to change that.

I like writing stories. That's what I like to do. That's the way I see it, but with every song I get sucked into feeling something.

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.

Genius, even, as it is the greatest good, is he greatest harm.

About the different levels of skill involved. You have to practice before you become a great masturbator.