think what you hope for is that at different times of your life you're able to write the poetry that reflects the moment that you're in on your own journey.

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.

Intercede for all souls.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

What men value in the world is not rights but privileges.

I remember those happy days and often wish I could speak into the ears of the dead the gratitude which was due to them in life and so ill-returned.

It's been my experience in life if you just keep thinking and reading, you don't have to work.

[About a tiresome colleague]: He could bore for Scotland.

I do believe that the party needs to evolve, or I won't be a part of it.

You have a pre-conceived notion of what you want the scene to be, but once you get there, that goes out the window and it turns out to be a way that you never imagined.

Worship is transcendent wonder.

Museums should be places where you raise questions, not just show stuff.