Poets sing our human music for us.

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

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

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.

When you kiss, my world falls apartHeaven comes down to woo my heart

Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood.

You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

I had what I would consider a normal upbringing and, which to me, a normal American up - upbringing for an American male child almost gears you towards going into the military.

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

Intuition is a suspension of logic due to impatience.

I don't know how much a photograph can add to a biography, the way a film or writing or narrative medium could. Because it's a frozen image.

The depth of talent in Israel is just spectacular. I was very excited by it because when you cast in LA, you tend to see a lot of the same faces on lists for various parts.

I think in all of the arts there are just certain people that have a gift. I think it's a certain spirituality, it's a God-given gift that just certain individuals have.