The more prose I wrote, the more the pendulum swung back toward the middle, merging some poetic sensibilities with the more fundamental elements of creative prose.

Poetry needs to be alive, unabashedly, and, for me, that entails seeing its complexity, the grit and grimness and jubilance and beauty.

Poetry does need a bit of ferocity. The only way to attend to the fractured world is to write a ferocious kind of music, to sing that volatility.

I found it incredibly challenging to write clear prose that had the dynamism that I wanted.

Well, we're all going to die, so mortality is a part of writing and life.

Being deeply aware of fragility and ecstasy seems to me an essential part of being alive and living fully - and there's no way for me to separate this from my poems.

I think of my best poems as vessels that I can or hope to fill with everything I have.

Every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.

To whom you betray your secret you sell your liberty.

If I had had success when I was early twenties I'm sure I would have lost my mind, I would've just partied like crazy and probably blown everything I had.

You're only as good as the sum of your parts, and one person can't be a team.

If you're trying to lose weight, you just have to eat less. I mean that.

I dont need an award to inspire me to keep making music.

Time doesn't go. Time stays. We go.

Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality.

I’m not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.

Like a cowboy saddling a bucking stallion, Republican leaders tried to tame the Tea Party while riding it to victories.