But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

The future is always beginning now.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

Every day, let our words blossom lotus in some one's heart.

Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.

That gap between half sleep and half awakening has always been occupied by nostalgia.

People will typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his own devices

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

All the money I have, I got it legally.

The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.

Vulnerability isn't a bad thing. Everyone's vulnerable and it only makes you human.

Funny, how one good cookie could calm the mind and even elevate a troubled soul.

In L.A., the only thing within walking distance is your car.