The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.

Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil's had the final say.

Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.

But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep.

To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?

The body, what is it, Father, but a sign To love the force that grows us, to give back What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?

Poetry is not a way of saying things; it's a way of seeing things.

How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.

Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.

Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.

It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.

Thank God we're living in a country where the sky's the limit the stores are open late and thanks to television you can shop in bed.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

From a personal standpoint, playing someone judged negatively by her friends is not difficult.

Love is like water. If it doesn't flow, it stagnates.

We'll have a kid or maybe we'll rent one. He's got to be straight, we don't want a bent one.

The gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

What made me want to be on it was reading a really good script, and being compelled by and attracted to the characters. I really loved Maura Isles, who was very fascinating to me.

Throughout human history, countries rise and fall. But not America-we continue to rise and rise, like dough, until Jesus bakes us in the fiery Afterscape of the Rapture.

Friendship demands attention.