I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

Just because you fail once doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything.

Some people believe that fairness comes with obeying the rules. I'm one of those people.

[Samuel] Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child's mouth!

A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

We're supposed to be the people who make culture, not decorate culture.

The trouble is people leave too much to luck. They get married and then trust to luck. They should be sure in the first place.

We're all mad here.

The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.

Short films don't go too far.

In a game, there are so many different variables that are thrown at you - the defense, where your teammates are, how fast your body's moving, and you have to be in control of all those decisions.