One trouble with a kind of falsely therapeutic and always reassuring attitude that it is easy to fall into with old people, is the tendency to be satisfied with too little.

You aren't just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.

I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.

Poetry is a deliberate attempt to make language suggestive and imprecise.

I got married, other people went off. We had sort of another public-we were our entire readership for many years, and we were very excited by each other.

Making a million friends is not a Miracle. The miracle is to make A Friend who will stand by you when millions are against you....

A leader is someone who figures out the way, then gets out of the way so others can lead.

Never be too confident or ndomdoubtful when everything is uncertain in this world.

I'm not a sucker for happily ever afters, but if these two characters don't get theirs I might climb inside this e-reader and lock them both inside that damn garage forever.

Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.

The best thing is to look natural, but it takes makeup to look natural.

If a player is trying to intimidate a skilled player on your team, what do we want? We want our skilled players playing, so we shouldn't be doing that.

Always speak the truth.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness... It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand each other less and less.