Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable.

Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance.

Life, alas, is very drear. Up with the glass! Down with the beer!

God, though this life is but a wraith, Although we know not what we use, Although we grope with little faith, Give me the heart to fight and lose.

Friendship is like love at its best; not blind but sympathetically all-seeing; a support which does not wait for understanding; an act of faith which does not need, but always has, reason.

Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always for money.

Nothing but blackness above And nothing that moves but the cars... God, if you wish for our love, Fling us a handful of stars!

Come, drink the mystic wine of Night, Brimming with silence and the stars; While earth, bathed in this holy light, Is seen without its scars.

Laughter shall drown the raucous shout; And, though these shelt'ring walls are thin, May they be strong to keep hate out And hold love in.

Why has our poetry eschewed The rapture and response of food? What hymns are sung, what praises said For home-made miracles of bread?

From compromise and things half done, Keep me with stern and stubborn pride; And when at last the fight is won, God, keep me still unsatisfied.

Marriage is not a noun it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day.

At the party, Rob Partridge said to me, "You gave hope to other balding men." My new epitaph: "Co-wrote a couple of decent songs and went bald shamelessly."

The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance; We find delight in the most loathsome things; Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.

We just always focus on quality, which can be frustrating during the wait, but which pays off when we're done (we hope).

I'm someone who'd never base how happy I am on how much money I have, or how good a restaurant is because of how posh it is.

We must hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

Submission to suffering is a form of annihilation, but transformation of suffering rekindles a faith that gives life.

Alber Elbaz is just a genius. He'll be in a dinner jacket and he doesn't care what time of day it is: I love that about him. He just marches to the beat of his own drum.

Reading a good poem can give me a far bigger kick than a novel. But it's not something I can keep doing. It would be like shooting up 10 times a day.

Just like a kitten that thinks its a tiger.