There are so many selves in everybody, and just to explore and exploit one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative person.

What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe

I want you to hear a new version of Dueling Banjos. Anyone else is welcome.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.

I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.

I once had the nerve to ask Picasso the question, 'What is art?' He answered, 'Art is a lie which makes us see the truth.

I don’t believe that a reviewer or a critic can really criticize well unless he can praise well.

To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

Poetry makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world.

Find out what you do best, and then don't do it.

As humans, we should be able to answer the question: “What do you do with your time?

The first kiss plummeted him down a hole and popped him out into a world he thought he could get along in—as if he’d been pulling hard the wrong way and was now turned around headed downstream.

If loving comes easy, nothing else seems hard.

Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.

If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have a better life than your parents did, and your children will have a better life than you did.

I know not what treason is, if sapping and betraying the liberties of a people be not treason.

There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it. To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.

I'm a recovering optimist.

Little details have special talents in creating big problems!

Because we are a conglomerate of our experiences - you take away any experience and you take away a piece of identity. You take away a piece of identity and we don't really know who we are.