I would be happier if people who went through MFA programs also were already, by then, deeply committed readers of poetry because we need readers of poetry as much as writers of poetry.

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.

What you feed in yourself that grows.

Be teachable.

The light within my soul is sacred.

Geraldo Rivera says Osama bin Laden is hiding out in Pakistan ... which means the most hated man in Afghanistan is now Geraldo Rivera.

Emotions are messengers that carry information. Spiritual growth depends upon receiving that information & using it.

You’re sleeping with an assassin, running for your life every single day from men who want to kill you and you’re convinced you’re going to die of discomfort.

You never want to be the grumpy guy, although I do have quite a grumpy face.

I've always been reasonably fatalistic.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

We come into the world alone. We go away the same. We're meant to spend the interlude between in closeness or so we tell ourselves. But it's a long way from the morning to the evening.