Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.

The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.

Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.

Hearing that the same men who brought us 'South Park' were mounting a musical to be called 'The Book of Mormon,' we were tempted to turn away, as from an inevitable massacre.

One does not become a guru by accident.

In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.

My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.

English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends.

Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral.

We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.

There is no other shame like senseless sin.

It's so weird how that can be, how you could have a night that's the worst in your life, but to everybody else it's just an ordinary night.

When people ask me what my religion is, I say it's the Arsenal.

That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means.

Beer is the Danish national drink, and the Danish national weakness is another beer.

The wall is silence, the grass is sleep, Tall trees of peace their vigil keep, And the Fairy of Dreams with moth-wings furled. Plays soft on her flute to the drowsy world.

It was illegal for black people and white people to play checkers together in Birmingham. And there were even black and white Bibles to swear to tell the truth on in many parts of the South.

I realized some of the pitfalls of being well-known; it was nice if you were successful, but it made it just that much harder to take when you failed.

Everybody thinks that actors would be really good at bluffing, but I think it's a little backward.