Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

Poetry, above all is a series of intense moments ­ its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.

teach your brain now .. don't wait until life teach you !

I don't believe that the course of anyone's lifetime has ever been as unerring as that of the rising and setting sun, but I know many lives that have been just as inspiring.

You can't make a difference unless you are different.

Necessity is stronger far than art.

New Yorkers are inclined to assume it will never rain, and certainly not on New Yorkers.

I love to work with Julia [Holter] because our voices have a similar timbre, and she's very unique. She finds very avant-garde harmonies that I adore.

Joy is our goal, our destiny. We cannot know who we are except in joy. Not knowing joy, we do not know ourselves.

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

There is a doctrine whispered in secret that a man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand.

To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist.