There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

Many times people will ask themselves, "where do I fit in?" This is my answer: You have the ability to fit where ever you are meant to be.

As he pulled the crayon out

Warren Beatty has always acted like a Movie Star even when no one knew who he was.

Do you have blacks, too?

When I was a kid, my father told me every day, 'You're the most wonderful boy in the world, and you can do anything you want to.'

Singers aren't supposed to have dairy before a show, but we all know I'm a rule breaker.

As in, I think 'Badlands' is one of the funniest films of all time: "Every day I wish I was carried off to a magical land, but that never happened" is one of the funniest lines in any film.

Do not trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises which the ordinary person does not hear.

Peace has no borders.