My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.

Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.

I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.

Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.

When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to prevail; they fear someone else will get their piece of the pie.