I am often asked why I write, and I don't know really--I just want to.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

The ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is its account, Return to the point of no return.

You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.

Much that is beautiful must be discarded So that we may resemble a taller Impression of ourselves.

The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through.

I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.

Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.

The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes

And so we turn the page over. To think of starting. This is all there is.

In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.

Happy is the man who marries the woman he wants

Don't let anyone tell you, ever, that this is a zero-sum game. Your genius does not threaten me. It delights and inspires me.

I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.

Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue; but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.

I need the concept of mercy for me to have some semblance of self-admiration. So in real life, I'm probably somebody who is more devout.

Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist.

Our fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.

His head just disappeared into his shoulders.

I'm a moderate Democrat. I've always been fascinated and maddened by the way things get done in our system, which as an ideal is so extraordinary, but the way it actually works can be mind-boggling.

The job of president is to motivate, to inspire, to be side by side with people making sure that they develop all their capacities and that I remove all the obstacles they have to grow by themselves.