...after a night spent writing poetry, one is almost happy to hear the milkman at the door.

True villains are extremely photogenic.

All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence.

The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The imagination is one of the forces of nature.

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.

The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

I do not know which to prefer - The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.

Books may not judge you, but people do.

My first character was Mr. Toad.

The hallmark of insecurity is bravado.

I've got the rest of my life to be a grown-up. And for now, it's OK to be young.

We need American Muslims to be part of our eyes and ears on our front lines.

Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.

Without the New York Times, there is no blog community. They'd have nothing to blog about.

Travel is the ultimate inspiration.

I couldn't be anorexic because I like food too much, and I couldn't be bulimic because I hate throwing up too much.

At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.