Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

When my stomach grumbled, I filled up on hamburgers, hot dogs, gyros, tacos, jerk chicken, pizza, and a side salad because I was watching my figure

Honor modesty more than your life.

Harbour Island in the Bahamas is beautiful, with turquoise water and pink sand.

Longing on a large scale makes history.

What's a victory when its hollow?

Not to win is guttering.

Children wear their natures like brightly-colored clothes; that's why they lie so transparently. Adulthood is the art of deceit.

Frustration is a function of our expectations.

Unless you have tested the assumptions in your business model first, outside the building, your business plan is just creative writing.

Then you have [Donald] Trump. So it could be the tightest, most hazardous race in political history and we can't afford to allow Trump to slither through. So that's where I'm at.