The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.

It is in virtue that happiness consists for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.

Toughest job I ever had: selling doors, door to door.

A soldier never dies. His blood makes the grass green for his children.

Humanization and coming to understand somebody as a human being is about as good a kind of forgiveness as you can get, I think.

There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one.

I know it sounds cliche but I believe in an essential way, it's very true that being a Christian is having a relationship with God through Christ.

When God delays in fulfilling our little thoughts, it is to have Himself room to work out His great ones.

I've done everything I want to do and gone everywhere I want to go.

There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)