When you get a poem [in a public place], it happens to you so suddenly that you don't have time to deploy your anti-poetry deflector shields that were installed in high school.

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Write the poem only you can write.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

When comprehending how different people truly are, you also comprehend the absolute necessity of some divine authority.

Nothing is more creative... nor destructive... than a brilliant mind with a purpose.

She was stronger alone…

Without true celebration discipline is obnoxious.

I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.

The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.

Women need to attack those negative voices they have in their head.

Receiving the Holy Ghost is the therapy which effects forgiveness and heals the sin-sick soul.

On Halloween, witches come true; Wild ghosts escape from dreams. Each monster dances in the park.

I just find Bobby Kennedy's short campaign for president so inspiring because his rhetoric identified what America can be like if we care about each other.