Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.

I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

Corncobs are the greatest fire-making tinder.

Knowing what to say is sense, when to say it is intelligence, how to say it is wisdom, why and how to say it is enlightenment.

Many a man who falls in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

The difference between the real winners is how long they take to feel sorry for themselves. My winners feel it... but they come back up and say 'hit me again.'

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

Despite the documented evidence by chess historian HJR Murray, I've always thought that chess was invented by a goddess

They ... asked me: 'How do you make your pictures?' I was puzzled ... I said, I don't know, it's not important.

If the Czar will not accord our people these desired liberties, then a revolution will bring about a republic which will assure us our rights.

We live in a time-crunched world, and just about everything we do seems to be urgent.

I love mythic stuff. I love playing with gods, I love playing with myths. A lot of it has to do with that they're the basic places stories come from. They're the clay that you make the bricks out of.

The world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings. Grasp it firmly, it stings not.