Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.

I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

Corncobs are the greatest fire-making tinder.

Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner.

Through the eyes of a happy girl lies guilt and destruction.

Travel is as much a passion as ambition or love.

I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies!

But eternal liveliness is what counts: what does "eternal life" matter, or life at all?

I swore under oath with the government not to give the whereabouts of my location.

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.

Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujours par le complique . Truth is too simple; it must always be arrived at in a complicated manner.

In all my years as a news commentator I was never once, able to tell the truth, about anything.

The Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.