Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.

Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

I write in the first person because I have always wanted to make my life more interesting than it was.

You know you're a hot mess when the only person buying you drinks all night is yourself.

I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.

If you have to cut corners to get it, without allowing yourself go through the process, you will not be able to keep it.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.

As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs.

I never felt big enough playing Thor. And then people talk about you like you're 9-foot tall and 800 pounds. I'm well aware of the illusion. There's not a second where I go: Yeah, I'm a god.

Hello, my name is the republican party, and I have a problem. I am addicted to spending and the government - and a big government. I would like one of them just to stand up and say that.

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

My wife wants something foreign for Christmas - like a Mexican divorce.

Don't tell yourself you don't need love just because it hasn't found you yet.