The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something done about it.

If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward April, then we would know.

Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal.

It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.

I'm basically a poetry scholar, and I'm happier here in my studio with my row of Chinese dictionaries than I am, frankly, at Lincoln Center.

Of course, there are some people who behave rudely. Allen Ginsberg used to like to get up in public and take his clothes off. I don't do that, but I liked Allen Ginsberg. He was a nice guy.

I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often. I know that I certainly have. That's easy to do.

George W. Bush is using language that's a mirror image of the language of Osama bin Laden when he says, "We have God on our side. This is the struggle of good against evil."

I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

Sometimes people come up and they get infatuated with some little brief imagistic poem or something, and they say, "Oh, I really like your Zen poems." And I say, "Which ones are not Zen poems?"

Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one another and toward our environment.

Older guys have too much emotional baggage. They’ve already lived their lives.

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.

I can't worry about match too much. There's nothing I can do.

A book of mine is always a matter of fate. There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course.

The stubbornness of a weak man should never be underestimated. The weak tend to be very stubborn when they've decided on something.

Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself...She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into the minds of men.

If war is glorified, it tends to eclipse the policies it is meant to serve.

I can't see myself not rappin' and not talking the bullshit I'm talking. I love that! I can't lie. Once I stop I'm just going to stop all the way.

On the Internet, everyone squats. In real life, the squat rack is always empty. You figure out what this means.