There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

The future is always beginning now.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

Life is spiritual.

How wonderful! How wonderful! All things are perfect, exactly as they are.

The counselor says that with more time and more surgeries, I will begin to feel normal again. She says this with a mouth that can still smile. It’s so easy to be reassuring when you have lips.

Great accomplishment seems imperfect, Yet it does not outlive its usefulness. Great fullness seems empty, Yet it cannot be exhausted.

I don't really think about anything too much. I live in the present. I move on. I don't think about what happened yesterday. If I think too much, it kind of freaks me out.

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life-happiness, freedom and peace of mind-are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Truth is its own reward.

There is no such thing as low-cost Christianity. Following Jesus means swimming against the tide, renouncing evil and selfishness

It was easier to trip a fool than to knock him down.