And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

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.

Christ! What are patterns for?

You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit.

It was only when I started to dig my heels in that I started to realize that's what I needed to do - that nobody was going to open the door for me, that I had to make some space.

Everything will line up perfectly when knowing and living the truth becomes more important than looking good.

Individual goals never meant that much to me. The Heisman is no exception.

When I hear complaints about less liquidity, remember there is such a thing as too much liquidity.

To dispute with a drunkard is to debate with an empty house.

I never went to film school, so I just sort of learned on my own.

The person who practices an art is an artist, not a samurai, and one should have the intention of being called a samurai.