This love for everyday things, part natural from the wide eye of Infancy, part a literary calculation

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Write the poem only you can write.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

There is always hope for man or dog in life if only they be cute

The fear of failure kills creativity and intelligence. The only thing it produces is conformity.

Every choice is a renunciation. Indeed. Every choice is a thousand renunciations. To choose one thing is to turn one's back on many others.

Self knowledge is the beginning of self improvement.

We started out covering income inequality in the magazine [Mother Jones], but that ongoing body of work positioned - and sourced - us well to put both Occupy and the 47 percent in context.

When you're being stalked by an angry mob with raspberries, the first thing to do is to release a tiger.

The details of what [Barack] Obama was going to do to the American health care system didn't matter. All that mattered was whether or not Obama was going to get it.

Whether or not you believe in God, you can probably sign on to the idea that being kind to others is divine. Just remember to include yourself in that circle of kindness.

If you have an effect that nobody can replicate, then your phenomenon fades away. So if you want to to have a legacy, then you jolly well better have an effect that replicates.

If I don't like someone, I'll let that person know. I'm not very diplomatic. I understand that.