You're shadowed by your own dream, especially as you get older, of trying to create something that will last in poetry. And so, you're working on its behalf.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

No Blame: The most liberating and empowering day of my life was the day I freed myself from my own self-destructive nonsense.

I love the sounds and the power of pounding water, whether it is the waves or a waterfall.

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

Very few of my characters are totally heroic or totally villainous.

We're just a bunch of angry kinds with no money.

The difference between average and good. Good and Great! Great and Phenomenal! It's their mindset!

Time flies when you're running out of money.

For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.

I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.

Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak.