A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.

Love doesn't need a reason. Hate needs a reason.

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.

Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28)

I write poems to find out why I write them

It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him.

I'm reading a manuscript by Rodney Jones, "Village Prodigies",it's one of the best contemporary poetry books I've ever read ever.

Each thing I do, I rush through, so I can do something else.

Baudelaire's L'Héautontimorouménos was long seen to be a sexual sadomasochistic poem, it is now generally accepted that the poem is about writing poetry.

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing.

He rolled his eyes. "Fiction lies for the truth.

We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling.

There are people who refuse to say that Africa is a continent, but that doesn't remove the fact that it is a continent.

Producing the vibration of love is based on your ability to feel deep pain...go into those feelings...and to find peace once again.

I'm not in the habit of having my photo snapped on some pretty young thing's arm. I avoid pictures because they serve no purpose, except to point out each new line, which is very meaningless.

The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.

That's one of the great things about DVD: In addition to reaching people who didn't catch the movie in theaters, you get to have this interaction of sorts.

Hope provides comfort, and hope does not always require probability.

It is for you and me to show that no vice is inherent in man.

I like to talk about America. It's so mysterious.