The poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other.

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.

Life without friends is just like a land that is barren.

But fairytales were, at best, dirty mirrors whose warped and pitted surfaces reflected a highly distorted view of the truth, quite different from reality.

This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!

He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes, long before he fell in love with her.

You can't see the glory of life if you haven't seen the dark side of life.

The shadows are as important as the light.

Being very rich as far as I am concerned is having a margin. The margin is being able to give.

Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?

Failing sucks. But it's better than the alternative." "Which is?" "Not even trying." Now he did look at me, straight on. "Life's short, you know?

The poor should learn what has always been the motto of the rich: "What's mine is mine and what is yours if I can I steal it."