When it comes to the challenges of the actual process, I soldier on as best I can, on my own.

Poetry either pulses with real life or it's just an aborted simulacra. There's no middle ground.

Fear knows no borders, and the terminology of hate has seeped into every aspect of life.

One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.

Everyone wants to be open and inclusive, but nobody wants to pay for it. It's the biggest roadblock to translating living writers, especially poets.

I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me.

I can't quite see the point of poems like "Wittgenstein Goes for a Walk with A Hawk in Sherwood Forest." I know they're trying to be clever, but they're not.

I don't like poems that invent memories, I have enough of my own.

As Trevor Noah recently quipped, the US appears ready to crown its first African dictator: Donald Trump.

The average political poem - especially the kind that wears this label all too proudly - is both dull and full of brow-beating triteness.

Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it.

OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.

The big difference in those days was that in England the Government subsidized TV, in America we work on TV so we can subsidize the Government.

I have an office in my house and one about five minutes from my house. I worked solely out of my house for many years, but find, with children, that I have to be in a different ZIP code to think.

To be too busie gets contempt.

Helping others is the way we help ourselves.

Call home at least once a week. It's a proven fact that we call home less the older we get. And that's wrong. It should be the other way around. As we get older, our parents get older.

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

I’m always going to be a hopeless romantic. Always.

I had a father and mother, who were devout and feared God. Our Lord also helped me with His grace. All this would have been enough to make me good, if I had not been so wicked.

The best piece of advice that I have ever received is from my mom. And she said, "Do you, boo boo." That is forever going to be the best advice.