People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling.

I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility.

Barack Obama is the kind of guy who likes to do things by inches, he's the kind of guy who likes to build consensus and compromise.

Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.

People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.