The usual bad poem in somebody's Collected Works is a learned, mannered, valued habit, a habit a little more careful than, and little emptier than, brushing one's teeth.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

The ways we miss our lives are life.

The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

Read at whim! Read at whim!

We can't tell our life from our wish

It is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

Except from the Americans—but every pearl has its oyster.

For the life of me I cannot remember, what made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise. For the life of me I cannot believe we'd ever die for these sins, we were merely freshmen.

She was everything he’d ever hoped for but hadn’t known existed…

Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else's can shorten it.

And what would you do if you met a jibboo?

There are those who, while reading a book, recall, compare, conjure up emotions from other, previous readings. This is one of the most delicate forms of adultery.

The mind has a thousand eyes.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I definitely have a hearty breakfast before I do anything.

When I am composing, the sounds are leading me to the way I want them to organize.

In comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought.. and so shall you come to bear them the more easily grateful that they are not worse.

She had to face the fact that she couldn't protect everyone she loved. She couldn't solve every problem.